Authors: Charles Stross
It’s time to go hunting.
• • •
AT ABOUT THE SAME TIME THAT EVAN DECIDES TO NIP OUT FOR
a nighttime snack, I am working late in the office. Mo’s en route to Lossiemouth—she texted from Aberdeen to reassure me, bless her—and if I go home there’s nothing to do but read or watch TV. Spooky will shout at me, I guess, but it’s hard to have a meaningful heart-to-heart with a cat. So: I have a stack of novels to finish for my book club report (continuing what I now realize is a long-standing tradition in this organization, even though it was discontinued a little over forty years ago), some more work to do on the cabling bid, and more logfiles to search. In a moment of anomie I glance around my office and spot the portable computer that time forgot.
Hmm.
A sneaky thought suddenly occurs to me.
If you can’t decommission it properly because it has no hard disk to shred, then it needs a hard disk.
There’s no rule saying the hard disk has to work with the laptop, is there? As long as I’m not
removing
a disk from it, then I don’t have to jump through the decommissioning-a-disk hoops. Adding a disk is easy: I just need to order one. Say, a cheap 300Gb external USB drive. Never mind that the luggable in question predates the USB interface by more than a decade. I just need to nail the hard disk to the side of the computer, and then, hey presto! It meets our decommissioning checklist because it’s got a drive I can feed to the shredder!
Problem solved.
I hunt through our intranet looking for the requisition form (“portable direct access storage device for backup, unsecured”) and start filling out the PDF. Then there’s a knock on the door.
“Come in—”
The door opens. “Bob, we need to talk.”
Jaw flaps, words flee: it’s my least favorite blonde. Finally I haul my scattered thoughts back into line, kicking and screaming. “Talk?”
“Yes, Bob. You know, that thing we do with our mouths? When we’re not eating and breathing?”
“Oh for—” I wave at my visitor’s seat.
“No, not here.” For a moment she looks uncertain, a flicker back to a ten years’ younger state of affairs for both of us. She’s wearing a sharp black suit and heels, with a hairdo that can’t be cheap; but it suddenly occurs to me that maybe she’s dressing up because she feels exposed. Office dress codes for women are more ambiguous and less forgiving than for men, and sometimes status signifiers can mean the exact opposite of what one might naively expect. “It’s nearly seven. Did you have any plans for this evening?”
“Wait, what?” I shake my head. “I have to go home and feed the cat. Eventually. Other than that, no, no actual plans.” I glance instinctively at the pile of dysfunctional laptops. “As you can see, all work and no play makes Bob a sour boy.”
I think maybe I’m babbling a little because she gives me a strange look, appraising and cautious at the same time. And she’s still standing, despite the chair, looking a lot more subdued than the other day, after the meeting. “I was thinking there’s a wine bar I know about five minutes from here? They do food as well, if you’re hungry.” An unreadable expression flickers across her face for a moment, then vanishes, airbrushed out of her muscles. She’s wearing makeup, I realize, expertly applied to look natural. Then I look closer. No, what made me think there was eye-liner and lipstick? What made—
“You want a drink?” I say. “Okay, we can do that. But, please. Drop the glamour? It doesn’t work on me.”
You’re not a patch on Ramona,
I think.
Or Raymond Schiller.
I smile in an attempt to defuse the jab.
“I’m not
trying
,” she says tensely, “it just
is
.” She glances away, breaking eye contact. “Can you will yourself to stop breathing?”
“No, but—” I stop. “You’re telling me you’re walking around in a level two glamour and you can’t turn it off?”
“Would I lie to you?” She sniffs. “Don’t answer that.” The lacquered mask of cool detachment is back in place. “Look, Bob, we got off on the wrong foot. Hell, we
left
off on the wrong foot, ages ago. But we don’t need to be enemies now. It’s . . . it’s childish and silly. Dangerous, too. So I was hoping we could, um, have a chat. Catch up on gossip. Bury the hatchet, if it still needs burying.”
“Oh.” I pull myself together. “Well, if you put it like that. Hmm.” I glance at my screen. There’s nothing here of pressing importance; I can requisition a scratch hard drive tomorrow. “One second.” I swipe my thumb across the reader, drop into the hypervisor, and kill the guest session, then tell the PC to switch off. When it’s done, I stand up. “Yes, let’s do that. Meet you in the lobby in ten minutes?”
“Okay.” She smiles momentarily, then pivots on a sharp black heel and sashays away. My gaze follows her as if my eyeballs are magnetized. Mhari used to have a hotline to my libido, and an older, more sophisticated, more powerful version of the Mhari I knew when I was younger is impossible to ignore when she wants to be watched. But I am disturbingly aware that I can’t tell whether she’s deliberately making a play in my direction, or whether I’m just falling victim to the vampire glamour even though I know I ought to know better. (Not to mention needing to pinch my arm and remind myself that I’m a married grown-up who shouldn’t be looking around and who
especially
shouldn’t be doing so in the vicinity of a crazy ex.)
More proof, if you needed it, that even a grown-up and self-aware Bob still harbors an inner eighteen-year-old who knows he ought to know better but just can’t help himself. But grown-up Bob will just have to arm-wrestle his inner eighteen-year-old into submission, because grown-up Bob needs to know what she wants, and there’s only one way to find out.
• • •
EVAN’S HUNTING PLANS ARE SIMPLE ENOUGH. WITH NIGHTFALL
complete, he uses his smartphone to conjure up a pre-booked hire car. He tells the driver to take him to Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, locus of far too many night clubs and restaurants and pubs, overspill from Hoxton and the whole Silicon Roundabout thing—the perfect happy hunting ground for a carnivorous hipster. There’s a cluster near the corner with Old Street, social venues for happy young people with brass in pocket who’re looking for food, drink, and merriment. Or in Evan’s case, food and a drink.
He’s thirsty and food won’t touch that, but he’s not immune to the lure of food. So first of all he hits a gastropub for a light bite, a stir-fry with tiger prawns and a cocktail on the side—a Bloody Mary. A Mary will do nicely tonight, he thinks, amused at his own impertinence. To tell the truth Mhari’s been getting up his nose a lot lately, cracking the whip and brandishing the chair at the Scrum as if they’re a mangy pride of performing circus lions. Fuck her and her little red wagon; there’s going to bed hungry once in a while and then there’s this awful gnawing emptiness, as if starvation is sucking the life out of his bones even though he can eat as much as he wants in the staff canteen.
Evan moves on to the East Village, where they’re having a Chicago club night. It’s still a bit early and the dance floor’s two-thirds empty, but that just gives him an opportunity to chill in the shadows near the bar, wrapped around another Bloody Mary as he checks out the talent. He can keep track of people better than he ever managed before Alex pointed him at that screen. He follows their gyrations and perambulations and holds them in his head, a cat’s cradle graph of which dancers spin into the personal space of others, a map of who’s comfortable and who’s stand-offish.
There are lots of groups here, gaggles of men and women and smaller numbers of single-sex groups, bros and girl couples out looking for a pickup or just some dance action. He can smell it on them: he barely has to look to see who’s on the prowl and who just wants to have fun. Which makes his own hunt almost ridiculously easy. He amuses himself by keeping score of their intersections, making silent side-bets on who’s going to trap off with whom—and so he’s taken completely by surprise when a blonde in a silver sequined mini-dress gooses him on the right thigh and giggles in his face. “Hi!”
Evan spins round but manages to block his instinctive reaction before he punches her in the face. A split second later he’s very glad that he did so. So what if she just tried to grab his balls? Her pupils are wide and she’s beaming delightedly at him and she is, indeed, exactly what he would have been looking for: large breasts plumped up beneath a plunging neckline that supports a fancy eye of Horus pendant on a silver chain, accessorized by bangles and war paint and a matching sequined bag slung over one arm. She’s dressed in silver from head to toe: silver dress and hose, silver evening gloves, silver glitter in her eyelashes. His nostrils flare: they tell him that she’s very female and very hungry. (Possibly in estrous, he thinks, although he’s not entirely certain, not sufficiently confident in his new senses.)
Her expression slips slightly as his face slides into view. “Oh man, I’m sorry, I thought you were someone—”
“No, that’s all right.” Evan reflects her smile right back at her and puts the full force of his will behind it, shoving at her inhibitions: “You’re beautiful and happy and that forgives all. What’s your name, love?”
“I’m Marianne,” she says automatically, and maybe she’s not an actual Mary but she’s close enough for Evan.
“Kiss me and make up, Marianne?” he asks theatrically. And to his not-quite disbelief Marianne leans forward and plants her lips on his face and her breasts against his chest, then wraps her arms around him with startling enthusiasm.
“Oh wow,” she breathlessly whispers in his ear, “I was so embarrassed! I thought you were—” Evan silences her by turning his head, until her breath steams his spectacles and she moans quietly as she melts against him. His chest is tingling where she leans against him. Marianne is a slick gelatinous mess of emotion stretched around his focussed will; he feels as if he can make her do anything.
“Did you come here with friends?” he asks quietly.
“Tracy and Debs, but they won’t—” Her breath catches. “This isn’t right.”
“Don’t worry, my intentions are nothing but honorable,” Evan tells her, mugging sincerity. And despite her expression of uncertainty her arms around his waist are solid. Using vampire mind control to pick up a clubber who’s already popped an E and who was halfway looking for a playmate isn’t so much easy as spurious. He eases up the pressure, afraid that if he doesn’t she might go down on him right there and then on the dance floor, which would be totally counterproductive and uncool.
“How about we go somewhere more intimate and get to know each other better?”
“Oh yes. Yes. What’s your name?”
“Evan. I’m—”
“Oh, Evan. Yes, let’s go.”
Marianne is passably hot and she is wildly overexcited with Evan, which he finds flattering. Dick had to fucking zombify his pickups to get them to go with him, in Evan’s opinion. Marianne grabbed Evan’s ass and he’s actually back-pedaling on the willpower to stop her trying to drag him down an alleyway. Evan is, if not inexperienced, nevertheless very happy indeed to meet a lady who with barely any nudging at all wants to jump his bones. And so he decides that there’s no harm in playing with his food first: “I can call a cab,” he says, “if you want to come home with me?”
Evan and Marianne tumble into a taxi together. He gives the driver his address while she plasters herself against his flank and buries her face between his neck and shoulder. Her tongue is hot and moist in the secret spaces of his ear, and he finds himself sprouting wood. He explores her stockinged thighs by touch in the sodium-limned shadows of the cab. Things are burning too fast, nearly out of control: he’s past second base and in danger of outraging the driver when the taxi finally pulls into his street. The cabbie is silenced by a couple of purple drinking vouchers, a tip of investment banking proportions; he disappears into the night, leaving Evan with his arm around Marianne’s waist. “This is your pad?” she asks.
“One of the flats, yes.” She giggles.
He punches in the keycode and the door opens. They stumble upstairs hand in hand like giddy teenagers. Then Evan is at his front door and pulls out his key.
As the door closes behind them she drags Evan towards the living room, the great big bean-bag leather sofa. “Wow, this is great!” she exclaims. There’s a click as she opens her clutch. Then they’re sitting down, making out, and she’s massaging his cock through his skinny-fit trousers. Cunning gloved hands in lycra work magic at his fly. “Listen, I want you to wear this,” she says, holding up a ribbed condom.
“I have no trouble with
that
—” His voice catches as she unrolls it over his cock, squeezing it; then she rolls sideways and straddles him, tumbling down onto him with a sigh of delight.
Crotchless panties for the win,
Evan registers excitedly:
my, she’s hungry!
They fuck enthusiastically, if somewhat haphazardly, rolling across the sofa until they come to rest again with Marianne straddling him, leaning against his chest and gripping his wrists in her gloved hands.
“I want to try something,” she breathes in his ear. “It’s a surprise: relax a little and close your eyes . . .”
Evan does as he’s told, lost in the glorious sensation of getting his end away, and doesn’t think anything of it until he hears a faint
click
and feels something close around his wrists. “What—” He opens his eyes.
“Nothing to worry about.” Her smile is secretive as she thrusts her hips down upon him again. “Just a little surprise.”
He tries to pull his wrists apart. “Hey, I didn’t say handcuffs were—”
She leans close again and kisses him, grinding down again. Her lip gloss tastes of plastic. “Kiss-kiss!” she says as she wraps her gloved hands around his head and twists. “Oh, and I’m not called Marianne,” she gasps excitedly. He tries to say something, but no words can make it past the tear in his spinal cord that has paralyzed him from the neck down. All he can do is blink at her, as the muscles of his face freeze in a final expression of horrified understanding. A few seconds later his nerveless body twitches and begins to ejaculate—and that’s when she comes.