Free Rule 34 by Charles Stross Page A

nuts to break it to her that she’d do much better at silent communication if she simply stuck to jerking your dick in Morse code. You waggle your eyebrows at her. “What is it?”
    She pauses, then looks up at you. “What is this mysterious job that you need to rent an office for, oh my husband?” She’s using this oddly stilted excuse for a private language she picked up from fuck-knows-where—some Bollywood musical version of domestic married bliss perhaps—she’s even batting her eyelashes . You may be telepathically deaf, but even you can figure out that this is the feminine equivalent of boldface and double-underlined capitals.
    You lean close, put an arm around her shoulder, and ask her: “Can you keep a secret, oh my wife?”
    She leans against you, seeking contact, which is nice (for once, there are no kids present). “If you ask me to, nicely . . .”
    You kiss the top of her head. “Alright. But please don’t tell your mother; she’ll get too excited.
    “It’s all to do with that job interview I had last week. The one the Gnome sent my way—”
    “I knew it!” She tenses angrily. “That rat!” She doesn’t pull away, but you can feel her quiver with indignation, and something inside you locks up tight.
    Bibi doesn’t know your exact relationship with Adam, but he’s been around occasionally, and she doesn’t like or trust him: She knows he’s a business associate, and that’s bad enough for her—the kind of business associate whose company landed you in Saughton, she thinks. Nonsense: It was just a spot of bad luck. But needs must, and ruffled feathers need smoothing: “No, love, it’s not something I’m doing for him; it’s just something he was able to point my way. It’s not big, but it’s useful, and there’s money in it, and more importantly, it’ll convince the social workers that I’m getting my life straightened out.”
    “Is it legal?” she asks, pointedly.
    “It’s more than legal: It’s for a government.”
    “Well then.” That shuts her up for a moment, but not for two: She’s not stupid. “What government? The Scottish—”
    “Hsst, no.” The current administration is a hive of snake-fondling Christians, in league with the Wee Frees; luckily it looks as if they’re going to go down hard at the next election. “You see, the job interview wasn’t in London, and I didn’t get the sleeper train: I had to fly all the way to Przewalsk! And I got the job. I’m going to be”—you savour the moment as you prepare to tell her—“the honorary consul in Edinburgh for the Independent Republic of Issyk- ouch! ”
    You were about to say Kulistan when your loving, obedient wife dropped the German gadget on your foot. “Oh!” She ignores your injury and scrabbles around on the floor in pursuit of the onion compartment, which has taken on a life of its own and is rolling enthusiastically towards the table. You stifle a rude word—being German, the gadget is over-engineered and surprisingly heavy—and instead bend over and pick up the detachable handle. The plastic collar where it fits onto the onion eviscerator (or whatever it is called) has broken, and there is a smell of burning—worse, of hot metal—from the frying pan.
    Bibi stands up, snorting deeply like an angry heifer as she clutches a clear plastic tub of finely chopped onions: Her chest rises and falls fetchingly under her blouse as she stares at you in disbelief. “Honorary what ? You’re making shit up again, you worthless sack of—” Then she blinks and lunges past you in the direction of the cooker: “Oh, my pan! Oh no! This is a disaster!”
    Right at that moment the front door opens with a fanfare of brassy pre-teen boys’ voices, and everything gets a little vague. You are not sure how the plastic-collared German onion-destroying gadget’s handle ends up in the frying pan, or why the turmeric ends up in the bowl of gram flour and the whole mess ends up on the floor, or where the smell