Authors: Charles Stross
“Anyway. Whether you want to join in the bust-out or not, we’re all going to need to go through this Laundry organization’s induction process in the next few weeks, and do so without incriminating ourselves. I’ve asked Mhari to develop a story list around the theme of setting up a successful presentation of the Scrum to the Laundry as an autonomous unit, and we’re going to work through it and use the rest of this session to take our sprint assignments. During induction we’ll meet each evening after work, to discuss progress and conduct backlog grooming. The Laundry has no need to be aware of this; I don’t think it’s a hanging offense, but it would certainly alarm any competent counter-intelligence officer if they knew we were approaching our in-sourcing with systematic coordination. So: I’m calling a fifteen-minute break for refreshments, and then we begin. Item one: how to pull the wool over an intelligence agency’s eyes . . .”
• • •
WORDS ARE EXCHANGED ACROSS THE THRESHOLD OF A CRYPT.
“A quantitative research group operating within one of the major investment banks appears to have transcended their humanity. Unfortunately, the outbreak was not confined to an individual. Worse, these people, who include a number of gifted mathematicians, are not practitioners of the art. They had no context within which to understand their new state, other than that provided by the mass media.”
“Oh dear.”
“I believe they may have drawn unwanted attention to themselves already.”
“Unconscionable.”
“I agree completely. It is interesting to speculate as to what might have prompted them to pursue such an unfortunate line of research.”
“. . . Yes, yes it is. What sort of scrutiny do you think they’ve attracted?”
“The heirs of the Invisible College have taken a direct interest. There was a visit. As our very own insider, that would make them very emphatically your problem.”
There is a muffled thud from within the crypt, as of a fist striking a stone-hard palm in frustration. “Intolerable!”
“I quite agree.”
“What is to be done? In your opinion.”
“I am too closely associated with the source of this information to act without risk of coming to the attention of the investigators. The new data mining techniques . . .”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Also, your connections . . .”
“That, too. What do you have for me?”
Old George unfastens the top two buttons of his overcoat. “One of my people in the bank provided my servant with the necessary passwords to connect his PC to the bank’s network. I confess I don’t fully understand such things, but it proved sufficient. I brought a summary of their personnel files for your edification.” He withdraws a cardboard folder from his coat, then kneels and carefully places it before the tomb, then stands and buttons his coat up.
“How am I to know that this is not some trap?” the tomb’s occupant asks, a trifle querulously.
“Don’t be silly!” Old George finally snaps. “How long have we known each other?”
“Sixty-eight years too long, if you ask me.” There is a pause in the conversation. “Never mind. If they’re truly ascended but ignorant they will be easy prey. If they’re not ignorant—well, we shall deal with that contingency if it arises. But mark my words, George, I
resent
this. Why can’t you send your bloody-handed catspaw to take care of them?”
“Because she’s about as subtle as a battalion of Cossacks and, as I intimated, they have already come to the attention of the people you hide among.”
“Bah. So you decided to dump your problem in my lap.”
“It’s
our
problem, old enemy. We have the same stake in its speedy resolution.”
“Be that as it may . . . there’ll be a price. You’re asking me to risk my own skin.”
“D’you think I don’t know that? Think of a price. Then name it. This lack of trust is unbecoming!”
There is silence, for a while. Then: “Your lady executioner. Lend her to me.”
Old George tenses. “I think you misapprehend the degree of control I exert over her.”
“Really? You created her, didn’t you?” The other’s tone is light, almost mocking.
“Yes, but she’s not mine to command,” George admits.
“What? She’s not a minion? Did you turn—”
“Certainly not! But her utility depends upon her retaining the illusion of free will. And upon certain other delicate conditioning. She’s like a very sharp Japanese sword with no guard—if your fingers slip—”
“Yes-yes, you’ll cut yourself, I understand. Ahem. Why, may I ask, did you create such an uncontrollable and dangerous tool?”
“Because, like you, I am a creature out of time and a fish out of water. This is not our century. We live among strangers who have replaced the people we knew in our youth. For my first century, buried in my research, I barely noticed the changes—but after the Great War it became clear that I could no longer move unnoticed among the common herd. (Nor, I imagine, can you.) So I have made it a habit to forge a new tool every decade or two, taking the bright metal of youth and hardening and shaping it: she is merely my latest and deadliest.”
“By tool, you mean predator.”
“Yes, of course. And she is very good at it, isn’t she?”
“You know I am immune to her particular methodology. Your black widow.”
“Yes. But you are not the type of prey this hunter is trained for.”
“Whereas our current irritant is, for the most part. So lend her to me!”
“Not unless you tell me why you want her. As I said, she’s as subtle as a battalion of Cossacks.”
“Yes. You did say that. That’s
why
I want her.”
“You need a decoy?”
(There is a pause.) “Yes.”
“Very well, then. I shall send you her file. But I must caution you. Firstly, if you break her you
will
provide me with a suitable replacement. Secondly, I have installed a safety catch: you will not be able to use her against me. And finally . . . remember that this blade has no guard.”
“I assure you I shall heed those warnings. Good-bye, George. May we not meet again for a very long time.”
Old George freezes in place for a few seconds, staring at the doorway. Then he darts forward, limbs blurring in motion, and grabs something from behind the lintel before he ducks aside and rolls, presenting the Kevlar-lined back of his coat to the opening.
The explosion he half-expects fails to happen. After a few seconds he stands and dusts himself down, before examining the contents of his palm. Exposed wires and a compact speaker gleam in the bloody after-midnight glow reflecting from the clouds.
George nods at the empty tomb, acknowledging his old enemy’s willingness to learn new tricks. A decade or two ago it would have been a bomb on a wire; now it’s a remote speaker, doubtless on a line to a mobile phone buried in the bushes. He turns and strides back the way he came.
His rival is satisfyingly canny. Younger and weaker than George, but more flexible and willing to experiment with new techniques, he has once more declined to present his throat to his elder’s knife. At the same time he has offered his cooperation. Which means there is a truce, at least for the now.
The law states that whenever two vampires meet, only one shall live. The youngsters in the bank are ignorant of the law; but ignorance is no defense. And soon they will learn about it the hard way.
• • •
I THINK I’M READY FOR IT—FOR THE USUAL AFTER-MISSION
crash and subsequent messy, shaky, calm-down—when Mo awakens, screaming and choking for breath, in the middle of the night. But this time I couldn’t be more wrong.
This is the pattern of our domestic life: that we keep each other sane. Mo and I both run errands for the Laundry.
I tend to be sent to investigate problems and work out what’s going wrong: Why are there too many concrete cows in Milton Keynes, why a livery stable on a farm in Sussex is ordering fifty kilos of offal a day from the local abattoir, that sort of thing. Yes, these jobs sometimes blow up in my face and give me nightmares for years afterwards, but that’s all part of the rich tapestry of life.
But Mo’s job is different: she gets sent to troubleshoot problems that have
already
exploded.
Normally she divides her working week between lecturing in mathematics at one of London University’s better-known colleges, and practicing with her violin. But once in a while she’s called upon to pick up the violin, go somewhere, and fiddle until blood trickles from her fingertips. She does not play happy highland jigs. That damned instrument—and the word “damned” is an accurate description, not an expletive—is one of the organization’s nastier assets. They placed it in her custody nearly a decade ago because she had an aptitude for the violin as an instrument (it used to be her hobby: when she was in her teens she briefly considered attending a music academy, but mathematics and philosophy won the toss), and she understands the eldritch mathematics used to describe the harmonics it is capable of achieving. Not many people can use an Erich Zahn instrument effectively. And even fewer can do it for any length of time without ending up in a padded cell.
So: after I get some food down her throat (not to mention half a bottle of wine) I run a bath for her, and make small-talk about office gossip. She’s pretty tired so after she dries herself off and starts yawning I accompany her to the bedroom. She gets into bed and at first leans the violin case against her side of the mattress, but then rolls over and lifts the thing onto the duvet and curls around it, for all the world as if it’s a teddy bear. I turn out the lights and wrap myself around her, spooning protectively, and within a couple of minutes she begins to snore.
I lie awake for a while. It’s not that I’m not tired, but the violin is creeping me out. I can sense it, bony and hard-edged and hot. When I close my eyes I can’t help seeing with that other, inner eye. With my eyes closed, I can see through Mo—human, warm, breathing softly, occasionally shifting against me—and through the case to the bony horror within. It’s red and raw and pulses slowly, and I swear the thing is looking right back at me. It’s not like sharing a bed with a teddy bear—more like a rabid attack dog who tolerates my presence only because the owner it is obsessively in thrall to is lying unconscious between us.
The violin doesn’t like me. The violin has
never
liked me. I think the only reason it puts up with me is because of what I do for Mo. And if I ever stop doing it . . .
“Aaagh! Can’t! Can’t! . . .”
Mo sits bolt-upright in bed, making choking noises and wheezing.
Somehow, despite the presence of the instrument, I managed to drift off to sleep. As she wakes up in the grip of her night terror she yanks the bedding away from both of us, and I thrash around, turning away from her as I try to pull myself back from the edge of deep dream-sleep. I am naturally scared witless by the choking thing and I make a couple of grabs for the bedside light before I succeed in turning it on to push back the darkness. Then I sit up and put an arm round her shoulders. She’s stopped choking but she’s breathing frantically fast, and I can feel her pulse hammering.
“Mo?” I say inanely: “Are you all right? Mo!”
After a moment she manages to nod. I stroke her spine and upper back, shoulder blades and ribs: she’s as tense as a tow-rope under load, still breathing too fast. I keep stroking and rubbing, and after a minute she suddenly twists her upper body and wraps her left arm around me, burying her face in the cleft between my shoulder and the side of my neck. Then the sobbing starts.
(I notice with distaste that she is still holding onto the violin case’s handle with her right hand twisted behind her, but I don’t dare try to detach it from her grip at this point.)
We sit there awkwardly for some time, holding each other while she sobs her heart out by dead of night. I feel helpless, and it’s awful: I’m hugging my wife, vibrant, alive, and lovely; but she’s in pain and I can do nothing to help relieve her agony except to be here, waiting for the memory abscess to burst and release whatever festering vileness has been poisoning her dreams. It feels
wrong
. And we’re being watched all the time by the jealous attack dog on the bed behind her, chewing on the stump of its tail, thinking mad thoughts, waiting for me to let down my guard or for Mo to lose her temper with me.
Finally Mo sighs, then sniffs, then sniffs yet again. “It was an exorcism,” she tells me.
I cautiously reach behind me for the bedside table, hunting with my fingertips for a box of tissues—I miss, and they go spilling across the floor. “Do you want to blow your nose?” I ask. Yes, it was an exorcism. Clearly the exorcism went badly. I realize with a sense of further foreboding that the Iranian secret police wouldn’t have requested foreign assistance for anything they could deal with using their own resources, but I don’t say that. She’ll tell me when it’s time.
“Kleenex.”
Sniff.
Her death-grip on my back relaxes. “Do we still have that single malt I like, the special Glenmorangie one? Would you be a dear and fetch it?”
“Will you be all right?”
She nods. I get a good look at her: her eyes are red-rimmed and puffy and her nose is dripping like a three-year-old who’s just been told that Santa doesn’t exist. But she’s awake, and getting a handle on whatever it was that woke her up. Which doesn’t bode well for getting back to sleep.
• • •
ELSEWHERE IN LONDON ANOTHER WOMAN WAKES ALONE IN A
cold and empty bed, to hear a telephone ringing elsewhere in her apartment.
She’s a light sleeper, and the ringtone in question belongs to a land line that her employer provided. Its demands are never to be ignored. The bell rings: she salivates. And on this occasion finds herself already fully awake and halfway down the hall, pistol in hand, before the third ring.
The phone manages another ring before she gets to it, in the living room. “Speaking,” she says tensely. Only one man has the number for this line, and a black box routes all random robocallers into a maze of twisty little voice mail boxes lest they annoy her; consequently, it only rings when her employer has a task for her.