Bob Howard: The Laundry Series

free short stories by Charles Stross

Table of Contents The Concrete Jungle...... 1 Down on the Farm...... 50 Overtime...... 72 Equoid...... 87

0 The Concrete Jungle I manage to pull on a sweater and jeans, tie my shoelaces, and get my ass downstairs just before by Charles Stross the blue and red strobes light up the window http://www.antipope.org/charlie/ above the front door. On the way out I grab my emergency bag — an overnighter full of stuff that Andy suggested I should keep ready, just in The death rattle of a mortally wounded case — and slam and lock the door and turn telephone is a horrible thing to hear at four around in time to find the cop waiting for me. o'clock on a Tuesday morning. It's even worse Are you Bob Howard? when you're sleeping the sleep that follows a Yeah, that's me. I show him my card. pitcher of iced margueritas in the basement of the Dog's Bollocks, with a chaser of nachos and If you'll come with me, sir. a tequila slammer or three for dessert. I come to, Lucky me: I get to wake up on my way in to sitting upright, bare-ass naked in the middle of work four hours early, in the front passenger the wooden floor, clutching the receiver with seat of a police car with strobes flashing and the one hand and my head with the other — purely driver doing his best to scare me into catatonia. to prevent it from exploding, you understand — Lucky London: the streets are nearly empty at and moaning quietly. Who is it? I croak into the this time of night, so we zip around the feral microphone. taxis and somnolent cleaning trucks without Bob, get your ass down to the office right away. pause. A journey that would normally take an This line isn't secure. I recognize that voice: I hour and a half takes fifteen minutes. (Of have nightmares about it. That's because I work course, it comes at a price: Accounting exists in for its owner. a state of perpetual warfare with the rest of the civil service over internal billing, and the Whoa, I was asleep, boss. Can't it — I gulp and Metropolitan Police charge for their services as look at the alarm clock — wait until morning? a taxi firm at a level that would make you think No. I'm calling a code blue. they provided limousines with wet bars. But Jesus. The band of demons stomping around my Angleton has declared a code blue, so . . .) skull strike up an encore with drums. Okay, The dingy-looking warehouse in a side street, boss. Ready to leave in ten minutes. Can I bill a adjoining a closed former primary school, taxi fare? doesn't look too promising — but the door No, it can't wait. I'll have a car pick you up. He opens before I can raise a hand to knock on it. cuts the call, and that is when I start to get The grinning sallow face of Fred from frightened because even Angleton, who Accounting looms out of the darkness in front occupies a lair deep in the bowels of the of me and I recoil before I realise that it's all Laundry's Arcana Analysis Section — but does right — Fred's been dead for more than a year, something far scarier than that anodyne title which is why he's on the night shift. This isn't might suggest — is liable to think twice before going to degenerate into plaintive requests for authorising a car to pull in an employee at zero- me to fix his spreadsheet. Fred, I'm here to see dark o'clock. Angleton, I say very clearly, then I whisper a special password to stop him from eating me.

1 Fred retreats back to his security cubbyhole or We have a problem, Angleton explains, coffin or whatever it is you call it, and I cross gesturing at the map. There are too many the threshold of the Laundry. It's dark — to save concrete cows. light bulbs, and damn the health and safety regs Concrete cows. I pull out a chair and flop down — but some kind soul has left a mouldering into it heavily, then rub my eyes. This isn't a cardboard box of hand torches on the front desk. dream is it, by any chance? No? Shit. I pull the door shut behind me, pick up a torch, and head for Angleton's office. Boris glowers at me: Not a joke. He rolls his eyes toward Angleton. Boss? As I get to the top of the stairs I see that the lights are on in the corridor we call Mahogany It's no joke, Bob, says Angleton. His normally Row. If the boss is running a crisis team then skeletal features are even more drawn than that's where I'll find him. So I divert into usual, and there are dark hollows under his eyes. executive territory until I see a door with a red He looks as if he's been up all night. Angleton light glowing above it. There's a note taped to glances at Andy: Has he been keeping his the door handle: BOB HOWARD ACCESS weapons certification up-to-date? PERMITTED. So I access permitted and walk I practice three times a week, I butt in, before right in. Andy can get started on the intimate details of As soon as the door opens Angleton looks up my personal file. Why? from the map spread across the boardroom Go down to the armoury right now, with Andy. table. The room smells of stale coffee, cheap Andy, self-defense kit for one, sign it out for cigarettes, and fear. You're late, he says sharply. him. Bob, don't shoot unless it's you or them. Late, I echo, dumping my emergency bag under Angleton shoves a stack of papers and a pen the fire extinguisher and leaning on the door. across the table at me. Sign the top and pass it 'Lo, Andy, Boris. Boss, I don't think the cop was back — you now have GAME ANDES taking his time. Any faster and he'd be billing REDSHIFT clearance. The files below are part you for brown stain removal from the of GAR — you're to keep them on your person upholstery. I yawn. What's the picture? at all times until you get back here, then check them in via Morag's office; you'll answer to the Milton Keynes, says Andy. auditors if they go missing or get copied. Are sending you there to investigate, explains Huh? Boris. I obviously still look confused because With extreme prejudice, Angleton one-ups Angleton cracks an expression so frightening them. that it must be a smile and adds, Shut your Milton Keynes? mouth, you're drooling on your collar. Now, go with Andy, check out your hot kit, let Andy set It must be something in my expression; Andy you up with a chopper, and read those papers. turns away hastily and pours me a cup of When you get to Milton Keynes, do what comes Laundry coffee while Boris pretends it's none of naturally. If you don't find anything, come back his business. Angleton just looks as if he's bitten and tell me and we'll take things from there. something unpleasant, which is par for the course. But what am I looking for? I gulp down half my

2 coffee in one go; it tastes of ashes, stale Oh, is all I can say to him. Sorry springs to cigarette ends, and tinned instant left over from mind, but is probably inadequate; as they later the Retreat from Moscow. Dammit, what do you pointed out to me, applied computational expect me to find? demonology and built-up areas don't mix very well. I thought I was just generating weird new I don't expect anything, says Angleton. Just go. fractals; they knew I was dangerously close to Come on, says Andy, opening the door, you can landscaping Wolverhampton with alien leave the papers here for now. nightmares. What kind of students? I ask. I follow him into the corridor, along to the Architecture or alchemy. Nuclear physics for an darkened stairwell at the end, and down four outside straight. Another word of command and flights of stairs into the basement. Just what the Andy opens the sliding glass case in front of fuck is this? I demand, as Andy produces a key some gruesome relics that positively throb with and unlocks the steel-barred gate in front of the power. Come on. Which of these would you security tunnel. like? It's GAME ANDES REDSHIFT, kid, he says I think I'll take this one, thanks. I reach in and over his shoulder. I follow him into the security carefully pick up a silver locket on a chain; zone and the gate clanks shut behind me. there's a yellow-and-black thaumaturgy hazard Another key, another steel door — this time the trefoil on a label dangling from it, and NO outer vestibule of the armoury. Listen, don't go PULL ribbons attached to the clasp. too hard on Angleton, he knows what he's Good choice. Andy watches me in silence as I doing. If you go in with preconceptions about add a Hand of Glory to my collection, and then what you'll find and it turns out to be GAME a second, protective amulet. That all? he asks. ANDES REDSHIFT, you'll probably get yourself killed. But I reckon there's only about a That's all, I say, and he nods and shuts the 10 percent chance it's the real thing — more cupboard, then renews the seal on it. likely it's a drunken student prank. Sure? he asks. He uses another key, and a secret word that my I look at him. Andy is a slightly built, forty- ears refuse to hear, to open the inner armoury something guy; thin, wispy hair, tweed sports door. I follow Andy inside. One wall is racked jacket with leather patches at the elbows, and a with guns, another is walled with ammunition perpetually worried expression. Looking at him lockers, and the opposite wall is racked with you'd think he was an Open University lecturer, more esoteric items. It's this that he turns to. not a managerial-level spook from the Laundry's A prank, I echo, and yawn, against my better active service division. But that goes for all of judgement. Jesus, it's half past four in the them, doesn't it? Angleton looks more like a morning and you got me out of bed because of a Texan oil-company executive with tuberculosis student prank? than the legendary and terrifying head of the Counter-Possession Unit. And me, I look like a Listen. Andy stops and glares at me, irritated. refugee from CodeCon or a dot-com startup's Remember how you came aboard? That was me engineering department. Which just goes to getting out of bed at four in the morning show that appearances and a euro will get you a because of a student prank.

3 cup of coffee. What does this code blue look with the headset on, but as I've been led to like to you? I ask. expect something like being rolled down a hill in an oil drum while maniacs whack on the sides He sighs tiredly, then yawns. Damn, it's with baseball bats, that isn't saying much. Get infectious, he mutters. Listen, if I tell you what some sleep indeed; instead I bury my nose in the it looks like to me, Angleton will have my head so-secret reports on GAME ANDES for a doorknob. Let's just say, read those files on REDSHIFT and try not to upchuck as the the way over, okay? Keep your eyes open, count predawn London landscape corkscrews around the concrete cows, then come back safe. outside the huge glass windscreen and then Count the cows. Come back safe. Check. I sign starts to unroll beneath us. the clipboard, pick up my arsenal, and he opens the armoury door. How am I getting there? REPORT 1: Sunday September 4th, 1892 Andy cracks a lopsided grin. By police helicopter. This is a code blue, remember? CLASSIFIED MOST SECRET, Imperial War Ministry, September 11th, 1914 RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME I go up to the committee room, collect the ANDES, Ministry of War, July 2nd, 1940 papers, and then it's down to the front door, RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET REDSHIFT, where the same police patrol car is waiting for Ministry of Defense, August 13th, 1988 me. More brown-pants motoring — this time the traffic is a little thicker, dawn is only an hour and a half away — and we end up in the My dearest Nellie, northeast suburbs, following the roads to In the week since I last wrote to you, I have Lippitts Hill where the Police ASU keep their to confess that I have become a different man. choppers. There's no messing around with check Experiences such as the ordeal I have just in and departure lounges; we drive round to a undergone must surely come but once in a gate at one side of the complex, show our lifetime; for if more often, how might man warrant cards, and my chauffeur takes me right survive them? I have gazed upon the gorgon and out onto the heliport and parks next to the ready lived to tell the tale, for which I am profoundly room, then hands me over to the flight crew grateful (and I hasten to explain myself before before I realise what's happening. you worry for my safety), although only the You're Bob Howard? asks the copilot. Up here, guiding hand of some angel of grace can hop in. He helps me into the back seat of the account for my being in a position to put ink to Twin Squirrel, sorts me out with the seat belt, paper with these words. then hands me a bulky headset and plugs it in. I was at dinner alone with the Mehtar last We'll be there in half an hour, he says. You just Tuesday evening — Mr Robertson being laid relax, try to get some sleep. He grins up, and Lieutenant Bruce off to Gilgut to sardonically then shuts the door on me and procure supplies for his secret expedition to climbs in up front. Lhasa — when we were interrupted most rudely Funny. I've never been in a helicopter before. at our repast. Holiness! The runner, quite It's not quite as loud as I'd expected, especially breathless with fear, threw himself upon his

4 knees in front of us. Your brother . . . ! Please my life in, for the honour of Her Majesty's hasten, I implore you! government in Chittral: he was talking about a Medusa. And although it quite unmans me to His excellency Nizam ul-Mulk looked at me confess it, I was afraid. with that wicked expression of his: he bears little affection for his brutish hulk of a brother, and with good reason. Where the Mehtar is a The next day, in my cramped, windowless hut, I man of refined, albeit questionable sensibilities, rose with the dawn and dressed for the hunt. I his brother is an uneducated coarse hill-man, armed myself, then told Sergeant Singh to ready one step removed from banditry. Chittral can a squad of troopers for the hunt. very well do without his kind. What has happened to my beloved brother? asked ul- What is the quarry, sahib? he asked. Mulk. The beast that no man sees, I said, and the At this point the runner lapsed into a gabble normally imperturbable trooper flinched. that I could barely understand. With patience the The men won't like that, sir, he said. Mehtar drew him out — then frowned. Turning to me, he said, We have a — I know not the They'll like it even less if I hear any words word for it in English, excuse please. It is a from them, I said. You have to be firm with monster of the caves and passes who preys upon colonial troops: they have only as much my people. My brother has gone to hunt it, but it backbone as their commanding officer. appears to have got the better of him. I'll tell them that, sahib, he said and, saluting, A mountain lion? I said, misunderstanding. went to ready our forces. No. He looked at me oddly. May I enquire of The Mehtar's men gathered outside; an you, Captain, whether Her Majesty's unruly bunch of hill-men, armed as one might government tolerates monsters within her expect with a mix of flintlocks and bows. They empire? were spirited, like children, excitable and bickering; hardly a match for the order of my Of course not! troopers and I. We showed them how it was Then you will not object to joining me in the done! Together with the Mehtar at our head, hunt? kestrel on his wrist, we rode out into the cold bright dawn and the steep-sided mountain I could feel a trap closing on me, but could valley. not for the life of me see what it might be. Certainly, I said. By Jove, old chap, we'll have We rode for the entire morning and most of this monster's head mounted on your trophy the afternoon, climbing up the sides of a steep room wall before the week is out! pass and then between two towering peaks clad in gleaming white snow. The mood of the party I think not, Nizam said coolly. We burn such was uncommonly quiet, a sense of apprehensive things here, to drive out the evil spirit that gave fortitude settling over the normally ebullient rise to them. Bring you your mirror, tomorrow? Chittrali warriors. We came at last to a mean- My — Then I realised what he was talking spirited hamlet of tumbledown shacks, where a about, and what deadly jeopardy I had placed handful of scrawny goats grazed the scrubby

5 bushes; the hetman of the village came to meet of the half-civilized children of the valley us, and with quavering voice directed us to our kingdoms, here on the top of the world? destination. The execution — for want of a better word It lies thuswise, remarked my translator, — proceeded about as well as such an event adding: The old fool, he say it is a ghost- can, which is to say that it was harrowing and bedevilled valley, by God! He say his son go in not by any means enjoyable in the way that there two, three days ago, not come out. Then hunting game can be. At the entrance to the the Mehtar — blessed be he — his brother small canyon where the woman had made her follow with his soldiers. And that two days ago. lair, we paused. I detailed Sergeant Singh to ready a squad of rifles; their guns loaded, they Hah. Well, I said, tell him the great white took up positions in the rocks, ready to beat empress sent me here with these fine troops he back the monster should she try to rush us. sees, and the Mehtar himself and his nobles, and we aren't feeding any monster! Having thus prepared our position, I dismounted and, joining the Mehtar, steeled The translator jabbered at the hetman for a myself to enter the valley of death. while, and he looked stricken. Then Nizam beckoned me over. Easy, old fellow, he said. I am sure you have read lurid tales of the appalling scenes in which gorgons are found; As you say, your excellency. charnel houses strewn with calcined bodies, He rode forward, beckoning me alongside. I bones protruding in attitudes of agony from the felt the need to explain myself further: I do not walls as the madmen and madwomen who slew believe one gorgon will do for us. In fact, I do them gibber and howl among their victims. believe we will do for it! These tales are, I am thankful to say, It is not that which concerns me, said the constructed out of whole cloth by the fevered ruler of the small mountain kingdom. But go imaginations of the degenerate scribblers who easy on the hetman. The monster was his wife. write for the penny dreadfuls. What we found was both less — and much worse — than that. We rode the rest of the way in reflective silence, to the valley where the monster had We found a rubble-strewn valley; in one side built her retreat, the only noises the sighing of of it a cave, barely more than a cleft in the rock wind, the thudding of hooves, and the jingling face, with a tumbledown awning stretched of our kits. There is a cave halfway up the wall across its entrance. An old woman sat under the of the valley, here, said the messenger who had awning, eyes closed, humming to herself in an summoned us. She lives there, coming out at odd singsong. The remains of a fire lay in front times to drink and forage for food. The villagers of her, logs burned down to white-caked ashes; left her meals at first, but in her madness she she seemed to be crying, tears trickling down slew one of them, and then they stopped. her sunken, wrinkled cheeks. Such tragic neglect is unknown in England, The Mehtar gestured me to silence, then, in where the poor victims of this most hideous what I only later recognized as a supremely ailment are confined in mazed bedlams upon brave gesture, strode up to the fire. Good their diagnosis, blindfolded lest they kill those evening to you, my aunt, and it would please me who nurse them. But what more can one expect that you keep your eyes closed, lest my guards

6 be forced to slay you of an instant, he said. bright blue, for a moment — she changed. Her skin puffed up and her hair went to dust, as if in The woman kept up her low, keening croon a terrible heat. My skin prickled; it was as if I — like a wail of grief from one who has cried had placed my face in the open door of a until her throat is raw and will make no more furnace. Can you imagine what it would be like noise. But her eyes remained obediently shut. if a body were to be heated in an instant to the The Mehtar crouched down in front of her. temperature of a blast furnace? For that is what Do you know who I am? he asked gently. it was like. I will not describe this horror in any The crooning stopped. You are the royal one, detail, for it is not fit material for discussion. she said, her voice a cracked whisper. They told When the wave of heat cleared, her body me you would come. toppled forward atop the fire — and rolled apart, yet more calcined logs amidst the embers. Indeed I have, he said, a compassionate tone in his voice. With one hand he waved me closer. The Mehtar stood, and mopped his brow. It is very sad, what you have become. Summon your men, Francis, he said, they must build a cairn here. It hurts. She wailed quietly, startling the soldiers so that one of them half-rose to his feet. A cairn? I echoed blankly. I signalled him back down urgently as I For my brother. He gestured impatiently at approached behind her. I wanted to see my son the fire into which the unfortunate woman had one more time . . . tumbled. Who else do you think this could have It is all right, aunt, he said quietly. You'll see been? him soon enough. He held out a hand to me; I A cairn was built, and we camped overnight held out the leather bag and he removed the in the village. I must confess that both the mirror. Be at peace, aunt. An end to pain is in Mehtar and I have been awfully sick since then, sight. He held the mirror at arms length in front with an abnormal rapidity that came on since of his face, above the fire before her: Open your the confrontation. Our men carried us back eyes when you are ready for it. home, and that is where you find me now, lying She sobbed once, then opened her eyes. abed as I write this account of one of the most horrible incidents I have ever witnessed on the I didn't know what to expect, dear Nellie, but frontier. it was not this: somebody's aged mother, crawling away from her home to die with a I remain your obedient and loving servant, stabbing pain in her head, surrounded by misery Capt. Francis Younghusband and loneliness. As it is, her monarch spared her the final pain, for as soon as she looked into the As I finish reading the typescript of Captain mirror she changed. The story that the gorgon Younghusband's report, my headset buzzes kills those who see her by virtue of her ugliness nastily and crackles. Coming up on Milton is untrue; she was merely an old woman — the Keynes in a couple minutes, Mr Howard. Any evil was something in her gaze, something to do idea where you want to be put down? If you with the act of perception. don't have anywhere specific in mind we'll ask As soon as her eyes opened — they were for a slot at the police pad.

7 Somewhere specific . . . ? I shove the predawn jogger, lit up like a light bulb — the unaccountably top-secret papers down into one dots are fading footprints on the cold ground. side of my bag and rummage around for one of Yeah. We're making about forty miles per hour the gadgets I took from the armoury. The along the road, sneaking in like a thief in the concrete cows, I say. I need to take a look at night, and I zoom out to take in as much of the them as soon as possible. They're in Bancroft side view as possible. After a minute or so I see Park, according to this map. Just off Monk's the park ahead, off the side of a roundabout. Way, follow the A422 in until it turns into the Eyes up, front: Can you hover over that H3 near the city centre. Any chance we can fly roundabout? over them? Sure. Hold on. The engine note changes and my Hold on a moment. stomach lurches, but the FLIR pod stays locked on target. I can see the cows now, grey shapes The helicopter banks alarmingly and the against the cold ground — a herd of concrete landscape tilts around us. We're shooting over a animals created in 1978 by a visiting artist. dark landscape, trees and neat, orderly fields, There should be eight of them, life-sized and the occasional clump of suburban paradise Friesians peacefully grazing in a field attached whisking past beneath us — then we're over a to the park. But something's wrong, and it's not dual carriageway, almost empty at this time of hard to see what. night, and we bank again and turn to follow it. From an altitude of about a thousand feet it Barbecue at six o'clock low, says the copilot. looks like an incredibly detailed toy, right down You want to go down and bring us back a take- to the finger-sized trucks crawling along it. away, or what? Right, that's it, says the copilot. Anything else Stay up, I say edgily, slewing the camera pod we can do for you? around. I want to make sure it's safe first . . . Yeah, I say. You've got infrared gear, haven't you? I'm looking for an extra cow. A hot one. I REPORT 2: Wednesday March 4th, 1914 mean, hot like it's been cooked, not hot as in body temperature. CLASSIFIED MOST SECRET, Imperial War Ministry, September 11th, 1914 Gotcha, we're looking for a barbecue. He leans RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME sideways and fiddles with the controls below a ANDES, Ministry of War, July 2nd, 1940 fun-looking monitor. Here. Ever used one of RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET REDSHIFT, these before? Ministry of Defense, August 13th, 1988 What is it, FLIR? Got it in one. That joystick's the pan, this knob Dear Albert, is zoom, you use this one to control the gain, it's on a stabilized platform; give us a yell if you see Today we performed Young's double-slit anything. Clear? experiment upon Subject C, our medusa. The results are unequivocal; the Medusa effect is I think so. The joystick works as promised and I both a particle and a wave. If de Broglie is zoom in on a trail of ghostly hot spots, pan right . . . behind them to pick up the brilliant glare of a

8 But I am getting ahead of myself. she arrived, but once the situation was explained she agreed to cooperate fully in return for a Ernest has been pushing for results with settlement which will be made upon her next of characteristic vim and vigor and Mathiesson, kin. As she is young and healthy, she may our analytical chemist, has been driven to his survive for several months, if not a year, in her wits' end by the New Zealander's questions. He current condition: this offers an unparallelled nearly came to blows with Dr Jamieson who research opportunity. We are currently keeping insisted that the welfare of his patient — as he her in the old Leprosarium, the windows of calls Subject C — comes before any question of which have been bricked up. A security getting to the bottom of this infuriating and labyrinth has been installed, the garden wall perplexing anomaly. raised by five feet so that she can take in the air Subject C is an unmarried woman, aged 27, without endangering passers-by, and we have of medium height with brown hair and blue arranged a set of signals whereby she can don eyes. Until four months ago, she was healthy occlusive blindfolds before receiving visitors. and engaged as household maid to an eminent Experiments upon patients with acute KC whose name you would probably recognize. gorgonism always carry an element of danger, Four months ago she underwent a series of but in this case I believe our precautions will seizures; her employers being generous, she was suffice until her final deterioration begins. taken to the Royal Free Infirmary where she Lest you ask why we don't employ a described having a series of blinding headaches common basilisk or cockatrice instead, I hasten going back eighteen months or so. Dr Willard to explain that we do; the pathology is identical examined her using one of the latest Roentgen in whichever species, but a human source is far machines, and determined that she appeared to more amenable to control than any wild animal. have the makings of a tumour upon her brain. Using Subject C we can perform repeatable Naturally this placed her under Notification, experiments at will, and obtain verbal subject to the Monster Control Act (1864); she confirmation that she has performed our was taken to the isolation ward at St requests. I hardly need to remind you that the Bartholomew's in London where, three weeks, historical use of gorgonism, for example by six migraines, and two seizures later, she Danton's Committee for Public Safety during experienced her first Grand Morte fit. Upon the French revolution, was hardly conducted as receiving confirmation that she was suffering a scientific study of the phenomenon. This time, from acute gorgonism, Dr Rutherford asked me we will make progress! to proceed as agreed upon; and so I arranged for the Home Office to be contacted by way of the Once Subject C was comfortable, Dr Dean. Rutherford arranged a series of seminars. The New Zealander is of the opinion that the effect While Mr McKenna was at first is probably mediated by some electromagnetic unenthusiastic about the prospect of a gorgon phenomenon, of a type unknown to other areas running about the streets of Manchester, our of science. He is consequently soliciting new reassurances ultimately proved acceptable and designs for experiments intended to demonstrate he directed that Subject C be released into our the scope and nature of the gorgon effect. We custody on her own cognizance. She was in a know from the history of Mademoiselle state of entirely understandable distress when

9 Marianne's grisly collaboration with observation, performed by an unfortunate Robespierre that the victim must be visible to afflicted with gorgonism, transform the nuclear the gorgon, but need not be directly perceived; structure? reflection works, as does trivial refraction, and (By nuclear structure he is of course the effect is transmitted through glass thin referring to the core of the atom, as deduced by enough to see through, but the gorgon cannot our experiments last year.) work in darkness or thick smoke. Nobody has demonstrated a physical mechanism for Then he explained how he was going to seat gorgonism that doesn't involve an unfortunate a gorgon on one side of a very large device he creature afflicted with the characteristic calls a cloud chamber, with big magnetic coils tumours. Blinding a gorgon appears to control positioned above and below it, to see if there is the effect, as does a sufficient visual distortion. some other physical phenomenon at work. So why does Ernest insist on treating a clearly I can now reveal the effects of our team's biological phenomenon as one of the greatest experimentation. Subject C is cooperating in a mysteries in physics today? most professional manner, but despite Ernest's My dear fellow, he explained to me the first greatest efforts the cloud chamber bore no fruit time I asked, how did Madame Curie infer the — she can sit with her face pressed up against existence of radioactivity in radium-bearing the glass window on one side, and blow a ores? How did Wilhelm Roentgen recognize X- chicken's egg to flinders of red-hot pumice on rays for what they were? Neither of those forms the target stand, but no ionization trail appears of radiation arose within our current in the saturated vapour of the chamber. Or understanding of magnetism, electricity, or rather, I should say no direct trail appears. We light. They had to be something else. Now, our had more success when we attempted to children of Medusa apparently need to behold a replicate other basic experiments. It seems that victim in order to injure them — but how is the the gorgon effect is a continuously variable effect transmitted? We know, unlike the ancient function of the illumination of the target, with a Greeks, that our eyes work by focussing sharply defined lower cut-off and an upper ambient light on a membrane at their rear. They limit! By interposing smoked glass filters we used to think that the gorgons shone forth beams have calibrated the efficiency with which of balefire, as if to set in stone whatever they Subject C transmutes the carbon nuclei of a alighted on. But we know that cannot be true. target into silicon, quite accurately. Some of the What we face is nothing less than a wholly new new electrostatic counters I've been working on phenomenon. Granted, the gorgon effect only have proven fruitful: secondary radiation, changes whatever the medusoid can see directly, including gamma rays and possibly an elusive but we know the light reflected from those neutral particle, are given off by the target, and bodies isn't responsible. And Lavoisier's indeed our cloud chamber has produced an calorimetric experiments — before he met his excellent picture of radiation given off by the unfortunate end before the looking glass of target. l'Executrice — proved that actual atomic Having confirmed the calorimetric and transmutation is going on! So what on earth optical properties of the effect, we next mediates the effect? How can the act of performed the double-slit experiment upon a

10 row of targets (in this case, using wooden Hans Geiger combs). A wall with two thin slits is interposed between the targets and our subject, whose gaze A portrait of the agent as a (confused) young was split in two using a binocular arrangement man: of prisms. A lamp positioned between the two slits, on the far side of the wall from our subject, Picture me, standing in the predawn chill in a illuminates the targets: as the level of badly mown field, yellowing parched grass up illumination increases, a pattern of alternating to the ankles. There's a wooden fence behind gorgonism was produced! This exactly follows me, a road on the other side of it with the usual the constructive reinforcement and destruction traffic cams and streetlights, and a helicopter in of waves Professor Young demonstrated with police markings parked like a gigantic cyborg his examination of light corpuscules, as we are beetle in the middle of the roundabout, bulging now supposed to call them. We conclude that with muscular-looking sensors and nitesun gorgonism is a wave effect of some sort — and floodlights and making a racket like an the act of observation is intimately involved, explosion in a noise factory. Before me there's a although on first acquaintance this is such a field full of concrete cows, grazing safely and strange conclusion that some of us were inclined placidly in the shadow of some low trees which to reject it out of hand. are barely visible in the overspill from the streetlights. Long shadows stretch out from the We will of course be publishing our full fence, darkness exploding toward the ominous findings in due course; I take pleasure in lump at the far end of the paddock. It's autumn, attaching a draft of our paper for your interest. and dawn isn't due for another thirty minutes. I In any case, you must be wondering by now just lift my modified camcorder and zoom in on it, what the central finding is. This is not in our thumbing the record button. paper yet, because Dr Rutherford is inclined to seek a possible explanation before publishing; The lump looks a little like a cow that's lying but I regret to say that our most precise down. I glance over my shoulder at the chopper, calorimetric analyses suggest that your theory of which is beginning to spool up for takeoff; I'm mass/energy conservation is being violated — pretty sure I'm safe here but I can't quite not on the order of ounces of weight, but by suppress a cold shudder. On the other side of the enough to detect. Carbon atoms are being field — transformed into silicon ions with an Datum point: Bob Howard, Bancroft Park, astoundingly high electropositivity, which can Milton Keynes, time is zero seven fourteen on be accounted for if we assume that the effect is the morning of Tuesday the eighteenth. I have creating nuclear mass from somewhere. Perhaps counted the cows and there are nine of them. you, or your new colleagues at the Prussian One is prone, far end of paddock, GPS Academy, can shed some light on the issue? We coordinates to follow. Preliminary surveillance are most perplexed, because if we accept this indicated no human presence within a quarter result we are forced to accept the creation of kilometre and residual thermal yield is below new mass ab initio, or treat it as an experimental two hundred Celsius, so I infer that it is safe to invalidation of your general theory of relativity. approach the target. Your good friend, One unwilling foot goes down in front of

11 another. I keep an eye on my dosimeter, just in probe and dig around in the thing's guts, trying case: there's not going to be much secondary to tease a chunk of ashy, charred meat loose. I radiation hereabouts, but you can never tell. The feel queasy: I like a well-cooked steak as much first of the cows looms up at me out of the as the next guy, but there's something deeply darkness. She's painted black and white, and this wrong about this whole scene. I try not to notice close up she's clearly a sculpture. I pat her on the exploded eyeballs or the ruptured tongue the nose. Stay cool, Daisy. I should be safely bursting through the blackened lips. This job is tucked up in bed with Mo — but she's away on quite gross enough as it is without adding my a two-week training seminar at Dunwich and own dry heaves to the mess. Angleton got a bee in his bonnet and called a Samples safely bottled for analysis, I back away code blue emergency. The cuffs of my jeans are and walk in a wide circle around the body, damp with dew, and it's cold. I reach the next recording it from all angles. An open gate at the cow, pause, and lean on its rump for a zoom far end of the field and a trail of impressions in shot of the target. the ground completes the picture. Hypothesis: Ground zero, range twenty metres. Subject is open gate. Someone let Daisy in, walked her to bovine, down, clearly terminal. Length is this position near the herd, then backed off. roughly three metres, breed . . . unidentifiable. Daisy was then illuminated and exposed to a The grass around it is charred but there's no sign class three or better basilisk, whether animate or of secondary combustion. I dry-swallow. simulated. We need a plausible disinformation Thermal bloom from abdomen. There's a huge pitch, forensics workover of the paddock gate rip in its belly where the boiling intestinal fluids and fence — check for exit signs and footprints exploded, and the contents are probably still — and some way of identifying Daisy to see glowing red-hot inside. which herd she came from. If any livestock is reported missing over the next few days that I approach the object. It's clearly the remains of would be a useful indicator. Meanwhile, core a cow; equally clearly it has met a most temperature is down to under five hundred unpleasant end. The dosimeter says it's safe — Celsius. That suggests the incident happened at most of the radiation effects from this sort of least a few hours ago — it takes a while for thing are prompt, there are minimal secondary something the size of a cow to cool down that products, luckily — but the ground underneath far. Since the basilisk has obviously left the area is scorched and the hide has blackened and and there's not a lot more I can do, I'm now charred to a gritty, ashlike consistency. There's a going to call in the cleaners. End. smell like roast beef hanging in the air, with an unpleasant undertang of something else. I I switch off the camcorder, slide it into my fumble in my shoulder bag and pull out a pocket, and take a deep breath. The next bit thermal probe, then, steeling myself, shove the promises to be even less pleasant than sticking a sharp end in through the rip in the abdomen. I thermocouple in the cow's arse to see how long nearly burn my hand on the side as I do so — ago it was irradiated. I pull out my mobile it's like standing too close to an open oven. phone and dial 999. Operator? Police despatch, please. Police despatch? This is Mike Tango Core temperature two six six, two six seven . . . Five, repeat, Mike Tango Five. Is Inspector stable. Taking core samples for isotope ratio Sullivan available? I have an urgent call for him checks. I pull out a sample tube and a sharp

12 . . . Frankfurt for an unnamed doctor from the Holy Nativity Hospital. The pharmaceutical assistant at this dispensary is a sympathiser operated by REPORT 3: Friday October 9th, 1942 BLUE PARTRIDGE and is considered CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME trustworthy. The prescriptions requisitioned ANDES, Ministry of War, October 9th, 1942 were unusual in that they consisted of bolus RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET REDSHIFT, preparations for intrathecal (base of cranium) Ministry of Defense, August 13th, 1988 injection, containing colchicine, an extract of catharanthides, and morphine. Our informant opined that this is a highly irregular preparation ACTION THIS DAY: which might be utilized in the treatment of certain brain tumours, but which is likely to Three reports have reached SOE Department cause excruciating pain and neurological side Two, office 337/42, shedding new light on the effects (ref. GAME ANDES) associated with recent activities of Dr Ing Professor Gustaf Von induction of gorgonism in latent individuals Schachter in conjunction with RSHA Amt. 3 suffering an astrocytoma in the cingulate gyrus. and the inmates of the Holy Nativity Hospital for the Incurably Insane. Our final report ref. 539/504-(ii) comes from the same informant and confirms ominous Our first report ref. 531/892-(i) concerns the preparatory activities in the Holy Nativity cessation of action by a detached unit of RSHA Hospital grounds. The hospital is now under Amt. 3 Group 4 charged with termination of guard by soldiers of Einsatzgruppen 4. Windows imbeciles and mental defectives in Frankfurt as have been whitewashed, mirrors are being part of the Reich's ongoing eugenics program. removed (our emphasis) or replaced with one- An agent in place (code: GREEN PIGEON) way observation glass, and lights in the solitary overheard two soldiers discussing the cessation cells rewired for external control from behind of euthanasia operations in the clinic in negative two doors. Most of the patients have terms. Herr Von Schachter had, as of 24/8/42, disappeared, believed removed by Group 4 acquired a Führer Special Order signed either by soldiers, and rumours are circulating of a new Hitler or Borman. This was understood by the area of disturbed earth in the countryside soldiers to charge him with the authority to nearby. Those patients who remain are under requisition any military resources not concerned close guard. with direct security of the Reich or suppression of resistance, and to override orders with the Conclusion: The preparation referenced in effective authority of an obergruppenführer. 539/504-(i) has been referred to Special Projects This mandate runs in conjunction with his Group ANDES, who have verified against existing authority from Dr Wolfram Sievers, records of the suppressed Geiger Committee who is believed to be operating the Institute for that Von Schachter is experimenting with drugs Military Scientific Research at the University of similar to the catastrophic Cambridge IV Strasbourg and the processing centre at preparation. Given his associate Sievers Natzweiler concentration camp. influence in the Ahnenerbe-SS, and the previous use of the Holy Nativity Hospital for the Our second report ref. 539/504-(i) concerns Incurably Insane as a secondary centre for the prescriptions dispensed by a pharmacy in

13 paliative care of patients suffering seizures and yanked out of bed at zero four hundred hours to other neuraesthenic symptoms, it is believed answer code blue alerts.) likely that Von Schachter intends to induce and Harriet is a back-office suit: mousy and skinny, control gorgonism for military purposes in forty-something, and dried up from spending all explicit violation of the provisions for the total those years devising forms in triplicate with suppression of stoner weapons laid out in Secret which to terrorize field agents. People like Codicil IV to the Hague Convention (1919). Harriet aren't supposed to get excited about Policy Recommendation: This matter anything. The effect is disconcerting, like should be escallated to JIC as critical with input opening a tomb and finding a break-dancing from SOE on the feasibility of a targeted raid on mummy. the installation. If allowed to proceed, Von Robert! Where on earth have you been? What Schachter's program shows significant potential kind of time do you call this? McLuhan's been for development into one of the rumoured waiting on you — you were supposed to be here Vertlesgunswaffen programs for deployment for the licence policy management committee against civilian populations in free areas. A meeting two hours ago! number of contingency plans for the deployment of gorgonism on a mass observation I yawn and sling my jacket over the coat rack basis have existed in a MOW file since the early next to the C department coffee station. Been 1920s and we must now consider the prospects called out, I mumble. Code blue alert. Just got for such weapons to be deployed against us. We back from Milton Keynes. consider essential an immediate strike against Code blue? she asks, alert for a slip. Who signed the most advanced development centres, off on it? coupled with a strong reminder through diplomatic back channels that failure to comply Angleton. I hunt around for my mug in the with all clauses (secret and overt) of the Hague cupboard over the sink, the one with the poster Convention will result in an allied retalliatory on the front that says CURIOUS EYES COST deployment of poison gas against German LIVES. The coffee machine is mostly empty, civilian targets. We cannot run the risk of class full of black tarry stuff alarmingly similar to the IV basilisks being deployed in conjunction with toxic waste they make roads out of. I hold it strategic air power . . . under the tap and rinse. His budget, don't worry about it. Only he pulled me out of bed at four in the morning and sent me off to — I put the jug By the time I roll into the office, four hours late down to refill the coffee filter — never mind. and yawning with sleep deprivation, Harriet is It's cleared. hopping around the common room as if her feet are on fire, angrier than I've ever seen her Harriet looks as if she's bitten into a biscuit and before. Unfortunately, according to the matrix found half a beetle inside. I'm pretty sure that management system we operate she's my boss it's not anything special; she and her boss for 30 percent of the time, during which I'm a Bridget simply have no higher goal in life than technical support engineer. (For the other 70 trying to cut everyone else down so they can percent I report to Angleton and I can't really look them in the eye. Although, to be fair, tell you what I am except that it involves being they've been acting more cagy than usual lately,

14 hiding out in meetings with strange suits from smugly. CESG outsourced our COTS other departments. It's probably just part of their application infrastructure five months ago ongoing game of Bureaucracy, whose goal is the contingent on us following official best highest stakes of all — a fully vested Civil practices for ensuring quality and value in Service pension and early retirement. What was enterprise resource management. As you were it about? she demands. too busy to look after things, Bridget asked Q Division to help out. Mr McLuhan is helping us Do you have GAME ANDES REDSHIFT sort out our licencing arrangements in line with clearance? I ask. If not, I can't tell you. guidelines from Procurement. He says he's able But you were in Milton Keynes, she jabs. You to run a full BSA-certified audit on our systems told me that. and help us get our books in order. Did I? I roll my eyes. Well, maybe, and maybe Oh, I say, very calmly, and turn around, not. I couldn't possibly comment. mouthing the follow-on shit silently in the What's so interesting about Milton Keynes? she direction of the now-burbling percollator. Have continues. you ever been through a BSA audit before, Harriet? I ask curiously as I scrub my mug Not much. I shrug. It's made of concrete and it's clean, inside and out. very, very boring. No, but they're here to help us audit our — She relaxes almost imperceptibly. Make sure you get all the paperwork filed and billed to the They're funded by the big desktop software right account, she tells me. companies, I say, as calmly as I can. They do that because they view the BSA as a profit I will have before I leave this afternoon at two, I centre. That's because the BSA or their reply, rubbing in the fact that I'm on flexitime; subcontractors — and that's what Q Division Angleton's a much more alarming, but also will be acting as, they get paid for running an understanding, manager to work for. Due to the audit if they find anything out of order — come curse of matrix management I can't weasel out in, do an audit, look for anything that isn't completely from under Bridget's bony thumb, currently licensed — say, those old machines in but I must confess I get a kick out of having my D3 that are still running Windows 3.1 and other boss pull rank on her. What was this Office 4, or the Linux servers behind Eric's desk meeting about? I ask slyly, hoping she'll rise to that keep the departmental file servers running, it. not to mention the FreeBSD box running the You should know, you're the administrator who Daemonic Countermeasures Suite in Security — set up the mailing list, she throws right back at and demand an upgrade to the latest version me. Oops. Mr McLuhan's here to help us. He's under threat of lawsuit. Inviting them in is like from Q Division, to help us prepare for our throwing open the doors and inviting the Drugs Business Software Alliance audit. Squad round for a spliff. Our — I stop dead and turn to face her, the They said they could track down all our coffee machine gurgling at my back. Our audit installed software and offer us a discount for with who? volume licensing! The Business Software Alliance, she says And how precisely do you think they'll do that?

15 I turn round and stare at her. They're going to That's better. want to install snooping software on our LAN, She glances at her watch. Are you going to and then read through its take. I take a deep come along to the meeting and help explain this breath. You're going to have to get him to sign to everybody then? she asks in a tone that could the Official Secrets Act so that I can formally cut glass. notify him that if he thinks he's going to do that I'm going to have him sectioned. Part Three. No. I add cow juice from the fridge that Why do you think we're still running old copies wheezes asthmatically below the worktop. It's a of Windows on the network? Because we can't public/private partnership fuck-up, film at afford to replace them? eleven. Bridget stuck her foot in it of her own free will: if she wants me to pull it out for her He's already signed Section Three. And anyway, she can damn well ask. Besides, I've got a code you said you didn't have time, she snaps blue report meeting with Angelton and Boris waspishly. I asked you five weeks ago, on and Andy, and that trumps administrative make- Friday! But you were too busy playing secret work any day of the week. agents with your friends downstairs to notice anything as important as an upcoming audit. Bastard, she hisses. This wouldn't have been necessary if you had Pleased to be of service. I pull a face as she time! marches out the room and slams the door. Crap. Listen, we're running those old junkers Angleton. Code blue. Jesus. All of a sudden I because they're so old and rubbish that they remember the modified camcorder in my jacket can't catch half the proxy Internet worms and pocket. Shit, I'm running late . . . macro viruses that are doing the rounds these days. BSA will insist we replace them with stonking new workstations running Windows REPORT 4: Tuesday June 6th, 1989 XP and Office XP and dialing into the Internet CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME ANDES every six seconds to snitch on whatever we're REDSHIFT, Ministry of Defense, June 6th, doing with them. Do you really think Mahogany 1989 Row is going to clear that sort of security risk? That's a bluff — Mahogany Row retired from ABSTRACT: Recent research in neuroanatomy this universe back when software still meant silk has characterised the nature of the stellate unmentionables — but she isn't likely to know ganglial networks responsible for gorgonism in that, merely that I get invited up there these patients with advanced astrocytoma affecting days. (Nearer my brain-eating God to thee . . . ) the cingulate gyrus. Tests combining the map of As for the time thing, get me a hardware budget medusa layout with appropriate video and a tech assistant who's vetted for level five preprocessing inputs have demonstrated the Laundry IT operations and I'll get it seen to. It'll feasibility of mechanical induction of the only cost you sixty thousand pounds or so in the medusa effect. first year, plus a salary thereafter. Finally, Progress in the emulation of dynamically finally, I get to pull the jug out of the coffee reconfigurable hidden-layer neural networks machine and pour myself a mug of wake-up. using FPGA (fully programmable gate array)

16 technology, combined with real-time digital How long had it been dead? asks Andy. video signal processing from binocular high- I think for a moment. I'm not sure — have to resolution video cameras, is likely within the call Pathology if you want a hard answer, I'm next five years to allow us to download a afraid, but clearly for some time when I found it medusa mode into suitably prepared after zero seven hundred. It had cooled to barely surveillance CCTV cameras, allowing real-time oven temperature. digital video monitoring networks to achieve a true line-of-sight look-to-kill capability. Angleton is watching me like I'm a bug under a Extensive safety protocols are discussed which microscope. It's not a fun sensation. Did you must be implemented before this technology can read the files? he asks. be deployed nationally, in order to minimize the Yes. Before I came up here I locked them in my risk of misactivation. office safe in case a busy little Tom, Dick, or Projected deployment of CCTV monitoring Harriet decided to do some snooping. I'm really in public places is estimated to result in over not going to sleep well tonight. one million cameras in situ in British mainland The basilisk, is found. Boris. cities by 1999. Coverage will be complete by 2004-06. Anticipated developments in Um, no, I admit. It's still in the wild. But Mike internetworking and improvements in online Williams said he'd let me know if they run computing bandwidth suggest for the first time across it. He's cleared for OSA-III, he's our the capacity of achieving a total coverage liaison in — defense-in-depth against any conceivable How many traffic cameras overlooked the insurgency. The implications of this project are roundabout? Angleton asks almost casually. discussed, along with its possible efficacy in Oh — I sit down hard. Oh shit. Shit. I feel mitigating the consequences of CASE shaky, very shaky, guts doing the tango and icy NIGHTMARE GREEN in September 2007. chills running down the small of my back as I . . . realise what he's trying to tell me without saying it out loud, on the record. Speaking of Mahogany Row, Angleton's picked That's why I sent you, he murmurs, waving the boardroom with the teak desk, the original Andy out of the room on some prearranged bakelite desk fittings, and the frosted windows errand. A moment later Boris follows him. onto the corridor as the venue for my debriefing. You're not supposed to get yourself killed, Bob. He's sitting behind the desk tapping his bony It looks bad on your record. fingers, with Andy looking anxious and Boris Oh shit, I repeat, needle stuck, sample echoing, imperturbable when I walk in and flip the red as I realise how close to dying I may have been. MEETING light on. And the crew of that chopper, and everyone else Home movies. I flip the tape on the desktop. who's been there since, and — What I saw on my holiday. I put my coffee mug Half an hour ago someone vandalized the down on one of the disquietingly soft leather number seventeen traffic camera overlooking mats before I yawn, just in case I spill it. Sorry, Monk's Road roundabout three: put a .223 bullet been up for hours. What do you want to know? through the CCD enclosure. Drink your coffee,

17 there's a good boy, do try not to spill it internal? everywhere. He nods. One of ours. It comes out as a statement. CPU business? Of course. Angleton taps the file sitting on the He nods again, then pushes the antique portable desk in front of him — I recognize it by the manual typewriter toward me. Start typing. dog-ear on the second page, I put it in my office safe only ten minutes ago — and looks at me Okay. I pick up three sheets of paper and some with those scary grey eyes of his. So. The public carbons and begin aligning their edges. at large being safe for the moment, tell me what Consider me typing already. you can deduce.

Uh. I lick my lips, which have gone as dry as REPORT 5: Monday December 10th, 2001 old boot leather. Some time last night somebody let a cow into the park and used it for target CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME ANDES practice. I don't know much about the network REDSHIFT, Ministry of Defense, December topology of the MK road traffic-control cams, 10th, 2001 but my possible suspects are, in order: someone CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET MAGINOT with a very peculiar brain tumour, someone with BLUE STARS, Ministry of Defense, a stolen stoner weapon — like the one I December 10th, 2001 qualified for under OGRE REALITY — or someone with access to whatever GAME Abstract: This document describes progress to ANDES REDSHIFT gave birth to. And, going date in establishing a defensive network capable from the questions you're asking, if it's GAME of repelling wide-scale incursions by ANDES REDSHIFT it's unauthorised. reconfiguring the national closed-circuit He nods, very slightly. television surveillance network as a software- We're in deep shit then, I say brightly and throw controlled look-to-kill multiheaded basilisk. To back the last mouthful of coffee, spoiling the prevent accidental premature deployment or effect slightly by nearly coughing my guts up deliberate exploitation, the SCORPION STARE immediately afterward. software is not actually loaded into the camera firmware. Instead, reprogrammable FPGA chips Without a depth-gauge, he adds drily, and waits are integrated into all cameras and can be for my coughing fit to subside. I've sent Andrew loaded with SCORPION STARE by authorised and Mr B down to the stacks to pull out another MAGINOT BLUE STARS users whenever file for you to read. Eyes only in front of necessary. witnesses, no note-taking, escort required. While they're signing it out I'd like you to write . . . down in your own words everything that Preamble: It has been said that the US Strategic happened to you this morning so far. It'll go in a Defense Initiative Organisation's proposed sealed file along with your video evidence as a active ABM defense network will require the deposition in case the worst happens. most complex software ever developed, Oh shit. I'm getting tired of saying this. It's characterised by a complexity metric of >100

18 MLOC and heavily criticized by various (Ring of Steel for counter-terrorism organisations (see footnotes [1][2][4]) as surveillance) and Milton Keynes (advanced unworkable and likely to contain in excess of a next-generation MAN with total traffic thousand severity-1 bugs at initial deployment. management solution in place). Deployment is Nevertheless, the architectural requirements of proceeding in order of population density and MAGINOT BLUE STARS dwarf those of the potential for catastrophic demonic takeover and SDIO infrastructure. To provide coverage of 95 exponential burn through built-up areas . . . percent of the UK population we require a total . . . of 8 million digitally networked CCTV cameras (terminals). Terminals in built-up areas may be Recommendation: One avenue for ensuring connected via the public switched telephone that all civilian CCTV equipment is SCORPION network using SDSL/VHDSL, but outlying STARE compatible by 2006 is to exploit an systems may use mesh network routing over initiative of the US National Security Agency 802.11a to ensure that rural areas do not provide for our own ends. In a bill ostensibly sponsored a pool of infectious carriers for demonic by Hollywood and music industry associations possession. TCP/IP Quality of Service issues are (MPAA and RIAA: see also CDBTPA), the discussed below, along with a concrete NSA is ostensibly attempting to legislate requirement for IPv6 routing and infrastructure support for Digital Rights Management in all that must be installed and supported by all electronic equipment sold to the public. The Internet Service Providers no later than 2004. implementation details are not currently accessible to us, but we believe this is a There are more than ninety different CCTV stalking-horse for requiring chip manufacturers architectures currently on sale in the UK, many to incorporate on-die FPGAs in the one million of which are imported and cannot be fitted with gate range, reconfigurable in software, initially FPGAs suitable for running the SCORPION laid out as DRM circuitry but reprogrammable STARE basilisk neural network prior to in support of their nascent War on Un- installation. Data Disclosure Orders served Americanism. under the terms of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2001) serve to gain If such integrated FPGAs are mandated, access to camera firmware, but in many regions commercial pressures will force Far Eastern upgrades to Level 1 MAGINOT BLUE STARS vendors to comply with regulation and we will compliance is behind schedule due to be able to mandate incorporation of SCORPION noncompliance by local police forces with what STARE Level Two into all digital consumer are seen as unreasonable Home Office requests. electronic cameras and commercial CCTV Unless we can achieve a 340 percent equipment under cover of complying with our compliance improvement by 2004, we will fail copyright protection obligations in accordance to achieve the target saturation prior to with the WIPO treaty. A suitable pretext for the September 2007, when CASE NIGHTMARE rapid phased obsolescence of all Level Zero and GREEN is due. Level One cameras can then be engineered by, for example, discrediting witness evidence from . . . older installations in an ongoing criminal Installation has currently been completed investigation. only in limited areas; notably Inner London

19 If we pursue this plan, by late 2006 any two is it? adjacent public CCTV terminals — or private Indeed not. When are you going to get to it? camcorders equipped with a digital video link — will be reprogrammable by any authenticated As soon as my hands stop shaking. Let's see. MAGINOT BLUE STARS superuser to permit Rather than do this openly and risk frightening the operator to turn them into a SCORPION the sheeple by stationing a death ray on every STARE basilisk weapon. We remain convinced street corner, our lords and masters decided that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in they'd do it bottom-up, by legislating that all order to minimize casualties when the Great Old public cameras be networked, and having back Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our doors installed in them to allow the hunter-killer brains. basilisk brain emulators to be uploaded when the time comes. Which, let's face it, makes excellent fiscal sense in this age of outsourcing, So, what this boils down to is a Strategic public-private partnerships, service charters, and Defense Initiative against an invasion by alien the like. I mean, you can't get business mind-suckers from beyond spacetime, who are insurance if you don't install antitheft cameras, expected to arrive in bulk at a set date. Am I on someone's got to watch them so you might as message so far? I asked. well outsource the service to a security company Very approximately, yes, said Andy. with a network operations centre, and the brain- dead music industry copyright nazis are Okay. To deal with the perceived alien mind- campaigning for a law to make it mandatory to sucker threat, some nameless genius has worked install secret government spookware in every out that the CCTV cameras dotting our green walkman — or camera — to prevent home and pleasant land can be networked together, taping from killing Michael Jackson. Absolutely their inputs fed into a software emulation of a brilliant. basilisk's brain, and turned into some kind of omnipresent look-to-kill death net. Even though It is elegant, isn't it? Much more subtle than we don't really know how the medusa effect honking great ballistic missile submarines. works, other than that it relies on some kind of We've come a long way since the Cold War. weird observationally mediated quantum- Yeah. Except you're also telling me that some tunneling effect, collapse of the wave function, script kiddie has rooted you and dialed in a yadda yadda, that makes about 1 percent of the strike on Milton Keynes. Probably in the carbon nuclei in the target body automagically mistaken belief that they think they're playing turn into silicon with no apparent net energy MISSILE COMMAND. input. That right? No comment. Have a cigar, Sherlock. Jesus Fucking Christ riding into town on top of Sorry, I only smoke when you plug me into the a pickup truck full of DLT backup tapes — what national grid. Shit. Okay, so it hasn't occurred to kind of idiot do you take me for? Listen, the ball anyone that the mass-energy of those silicon has gone up. Someone uploaded the nuclei has to come from somewhere, somewhere SCORPION STARE code to a bunch of traffic else, somewhere in the Dungeon cams off Monk's Road roundabout and turned Dimensions . . . damn. But that's not the point,

20 Daisy into six hundred pounds of boiled beef on orbital battle stations, and why the Americans the bone a la basilisk, and all you can say is no are getting so upset about the Rune of Al- comment? Sabbah that they're trying to build censorware into every analogue-to-digital converter on the Listen, Bob, I think you're taking this all too planet. personally. I can't comment on the Monk's Road incident because you're officially the tag-team Do I have CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN investigative lead and I'm here to provide clearance? Or do I just have to take it on trust? backup and support, not to second-guess you. Take it on trust for now, I'll try and get you I'm trying to be helpful, okay? cleared later in the week. Sorry about that, but Sorry, sorry. I'm just a bit upset. this truly . . . look, in this instance the ends justify the means. Take it from me. Okay? Yes, well, if it's any consolation that goes for me, too, and for Angleton believe it or not, but Shit. I need another — no, I've already had too 'upset' and fifty pence will buy you a cup of much coffee. So, what am I supposed to do? coffee and what we really need is to finger the Well, the good news is we've narrowed it down means, motive, and murderer of Daisy the Cow a bit. You will be pleased to know that we just in time to close the stable door. Oh, and we can ordered the West Yorkshire Met's computer rule out external penetration — the network crime squad to go in with hobnailed boots and loop to Monk's Road is on a private backbone take down the entire MK traffic camera network intranet that's firewalled up to the eyeballs. and opcentre. Official reason is a suspicion of Does that make it easier for you? time bombs installed by a disgruntled former No shit! Listen, I happen to agree with you in employee — who is innocent, incidentally — principle, but I am still upset, Andy, and I want but it lets us turn it into a Computer Misuse case to tell you — no shit. Look, this is so not- and send in a reasonably clueful team. They're sensible that I know I'm way the hell too late but about to officially call for backup from CESG, I think the whole MAGINOT BLUE STARS who are going to second them a purported idea is fucking insane, I mean, like, bull-goose spook from GCHQ, and that spook is going to barking-at-the-moon hairs-on-the-palm-of-your- be you. I want you to crawl all over that camera hands crazy. Like atomic landmines buried network and figure out how SCORPION under every street corner! Didn't they know that STARE might have got onto it. Which is going the only unhackable computer is one that's to be easier than you think because SCORPION running a secure operating system, welded STARE isn't exactly open source and there are inside a steel safe, buried under a ton of only two authorised development teams concrete at the bottom of a coal mine guarded working on it on the planet that we know of, or by the SAS and a couple of armoured divisions, at least in this country, one of them is — and switched off? What did they think they were surprise — based in Milton Keynes, and as of doing? right this minute you have clearance to stamp all over their turf and play the Gestapo officer with Defending us against CASE NIGHTMARE our top boffin labs. Which is a power I trust you GREEN, Bob. Which I'll have you know is why will not abuse without good reason. the Russians are so dead keen to get Energiya flying again so they can launch their Polyus Oh great, I always fancied myself in a long,

21 black leather trench coat. What will Mo think? who work on the assumption that anyone who is not known to be a Communist infiltrator from She'll think you look the part when you're angry. North Korea is a dangerously unclassified Are you up for it? security risk. They search me and make me pee How the fuck could I say no, when you put it in a cup and leave my palmtop at the site that way? security office, but for some reason they don't I'm glad you understand. Now, have you got any ask me to surrender the small leather bag other questions for me before we wrap this up containing a mummified pigeon's foot that I and send the tape to the auditors? wear on a silver chain round my neck when I explain that it's on account of my religion. Uh, yeah. One question. Why me? Idiots. Why — well! Hmm. I suppose because you're already on the inside, Bob. And you've got a It is windy and rainy outside so I have no pretty unique skill mix. Something you overlook objection to being ushered into an air- is that we don't have many field qualified conditioned meeting room on the third floor of agents, and most of those we have are old an outlying wing, offered institutional beige school two-fisted shoot-from-the-hip-with-a- coffee the same colour as the office carpet, and rune-of-destruction field necromancers; they to spending the next four hours in a meeting don't understand these modern Babbage engine with Kevin, Robin, Jane, and Phil, who explain Internet contraptions like you do. And you've to me in turn what a senior operations officer already got experience with basilisk weapons, or from GCHQ detached for field duty is expected did you think we issued those things like to do in the way of maintaining security, calling toothpaste tubes? So rather than find someone on backup, reporting problems, and filling out who doesn't know as much, you just happened the two hundred and seventeen different forms to be the man on the spot who knew enough and that senior operations officers are apparently was thought . . . appropriate. employed to spend their time filling out. The Laundry may have a bureaucracy surfeit and a Gee, thanks. I'll sleep a lot better tonight craze for ISO-9000 certification, but GCHQ is knowing that you couldn't find anyone better even worse, with some bizarre spatchcock suited to the job. Really scraping the barrel, version of BS5720 quality assurance applied to aren't we? all their procedures in an attempt to ensure that If only you knew . . . if only you knew. the Home Office minister can account for all available paper clips in near real-time if challenged in the House by Her Majesty's loyal The next morning they put me on the train to opposition. On the other hand, they've got a Cheltenham — second class of course — to bigger budget than us and all they have to worry visit a large office site, which appears as a blank about is having to read other people's email, spot on all maps of the area, just in case the instead of having their souls sucked out by Russians haven't noticed the farm growing tentacular horrors from beyond the universe. satellite dishes out back. I spend a very Oh, and you really ought to wear a tie when uncomfortable half hour being checked through you're representing us in public, Phil says security by a couple of Rottweilers in blue suits apologetically at the end of his spiel.

22 And get a haircut, Jane adds with a smile. examines my warrant card closely, gives me a beady-eyed stare as if he expects me to break Bastards. down and confess instantly to a string of The Human Resources imps billet me in a bed unsolved burglaries, then turns and ambles into and breakfast run by a genteel pair of elderly the noisy back office round the corner. I have High Tory sociopaths, a Mr and Mrs MacBride. just enough time to read the more surreal crime He's bald, loafs around in slippers, and reads the prevention posters for the second time (Are your Telegraph while muttering darkly about the neighbours fox-hunting reptiles from the planet need for capital punishment as a solution to the of the green wellies? Denounce them here, free problem of bogus asylum seekers; she wears of charge!) when the door bangs open and a heavy horn-rimmed glasses and the hairdo that determined-looking woman in a grey suit barges time forgot. The corridors are wallpapered with in. She looks how Annie Lennox would look if an exquisitely disgusting floral print and the she'd joined the constabulary, been glassed once whole place smells of mothballs, the only or twice, and had a really dodgy curry the night symptom of the twenty-first century being a before. cheap and nasty webcam on the hall staircase. I Okay, who's the joker? she demands. You. A try not to shudder as I slouch upstairs to my bony finger points at me. You're from — she room and barricade the door before settling sees the warrant card — oh shit. Over her down for the evening phone call to Mo and a shoulder: Jeffries, Jeffries, you rat bastard, you game of Civ on my palmtop (which I rescued set me up! Oh, why do I bother. Back in my from Security on my way out.) It could be direction: You're the spook who got me out of worse, Mo consoles me, at least your landlord bed the day before yesterday after a graveyard doesn't have gill slits and greenish skin. shift. Is this your mess? The next morning I elbow my way onto an early I take a deep breath. Mine and yours both. I'm train to London, struggle through the rush hour just back down from — I clear my throat — and crush, and somehow manage to weasel my way I've got orders to find an inspector J. Sullivan into a seat on a train to Milton Keynes; it's full and drag him into an interview room. Mentally of brightly clad German backpackers and crossing my fingers: What's the J stand for? irritated businessmen on their way to Luton airport, but I get off before there and catch a taxi Josephine. And it's detective inspector, while to the cop shop. There is nothing better in life you're about it. She lifts the barrier. You'd better than drawing on the sole of your slipper with a come in then. Josephine looks tired and biro instead of going to the pub on a Saturday annoyed. Where's your other card? night, the lead singer of Half Man Half Biscuit My other — oh. I shrug. We don't flash them sings mournfully on my iPod, and I am inclined around; might be a bit of a disaster if one went to agree, subject to the caveat that Saturday missing. Anyone who picked it up would be in nights at the pub are functionally equivalent to breach of Section Three, at the very least. Not to damp Thursday mornings at the police station. mention in peril of their immortal soul. Is Inspector Sullivan available? I ask at the front desk. It's okay, I've signed the Section, in blood. She raises an eyebrow at me. Just a moment. The moustachioed constable

23 Paragraph two? I ask, just to be sure she's not off your desk as soon as possible. I'd just like to bluffing. get a few things straight first. She shakes her head. No, paragraph three. Hmm. So what do you need to know? We've only had two flying saucer sightings and six Pass, friend. And then I let her see the warrant alien abductions this year so far. She raises one card as it really is, the way it reaches into your eyebrow, arms crossed and shoulders set a trifle head and twists things around so you want to defensively. (Who'd have thought it? Being throw up at the mere thought of questioning its interviewed by higher authorities makes the validity. Satisfied? alpha female detective defensive.) It's not like She just nods: a cool customer for sure. The I've got all day: I'm due in a case committee trouble with Section Three of the Official briefing at noon and I've got to pick up my son Secrets Act is that it's an offense to know it from school at four. exists without having signed it — in blood. So On second thought, maybe she really is busy. To us signatories who are in theory cleared to talk start with, did you get any witness reports or about such supersecret national security issues CCTV records from the scene? And have you as the Laundry's tea trolley rota are in practice identified the cow, and worked out how it got unable to broach the topic directly. We're there? supposed to rely on introductions, but that breaks down rapidly in the field. It's a bit like No eyewitnesses, not until three o'clock, when lesbian sheep; as ewes display their sexual Vernon Thwaite was out walking his girlfriend's arousal by standing around waiting to be toy poodle which had diarrhoea. She pulls a mounted, it's hard to know if somebody else is, face, which makes the scar on her forehead well, you know. Cleared. Come on, she adds, in wrinkle into visibility. If you want we can go a marginally less hostile tone, we can pick up a over the team reports together. I take it that's cup of coffee on the way. what pulled you in? Five minutes later we're sitting down with a You could say that. I dip a cheap IKEA spoon in notepad, a telephone, and an antique tape my coffee and check cautiously after a few recorder that Smiley probably used to debrief seconds to see if the metal's begun to corrode. Karla, back when men were real men and Helicopters make me airsick. Especially after a lesbian sheep were afraid. This had better be night out when I was expecting a morning lie-in. important, Josephine complains, clicking a She almost smiles before she remembers she's frighteningly high-tech sweetener dispenser officially grumpy with me. Okay, so no earlier repeatedly over her black Nescafé. I've got a reports. What else? persistent burglar, two rapes, a string of car No tape, she says, flattening her hands on the thefts, and a phantom pisser who keeps breaking tabletop to either side of her cup and examining into department stores to deal with, plus a bunch her nail cuticles. Nothing. One second it's zero of cloggies from West Yorkshire who're running zero twenty-six, the next it's zero seven some kind of computer audit — your fault, I fourteen. Numbers to engrave in your heart. believe. I need to get bogged down in X-Files Dennis, our departmental geek, was most upset rubbish right now like I need a hole in my head. with MKSG — they're the public-private Oh, it's important all right. And I hope to get it partners in the regional surveillance outsourcing

24 sector. stolen on HOLMES2. Right now it's sitting in the pound down the road; they smoked it for Zero zero twenty-six to zero seven fourteen, I prints but it came up clean and we don't have echo as I jot them down on my palmtop. enough money to send a SOCO and a forensics MKSG. Right, that's helpful. team to do a full workup on every stolen car we It is? She tilts her head sideways and stares at run across. However, if you twist my arm and me like I'm a fly that's landed in her coffee. promise me a budget and to go to the mat with Yup. I nod, then tell myself that it'd be really my boss I'll see what I can lay on. stupid to wind her up without good reason. That may not be necessary: we have ways and Sorry. What I can tell you is, I'm as interested in means. But can you get someone to drive me anything that happened to the cameras as the down there? I'll take some readings and get out cow. If you hear anything about them — of your face — except for the business with especially about them being tampered with — Daisy. How are you covering that? I'd love to know. But in the meantime — Daisy. Oh, we'll find something. Right now it's filed Do you know where she came from? under 'F' for Fucking Fortean Freakery, but I Yes. She doesn't crack a smile but her shoulders was thinking of announcing it's just an old unwind slightly. Actually, she's number two six animal that had been dumped illegally by a three from Emmett-Moore Ltd, a dairy factory farmer who didn't want to pay to have it out near Dunstable. Or rather, she was two six slaughtered. three until three days ago. She was getting along That sounds about right. I nod slowly. Now, I'd a bit, so they sold her to a local slaughterhouse like to play a random word-association game along with a job lot of seven other cows. I with you. Okay? Ten seconds. When I say the followed-up on the other seven and they'll be words tell me what you think of. Right? showing up in your McHappy McMeal some time next month. But not Daisy. Seems a She looks puzzled. Is this — passing farmer in a Range Rover with a wagon Listen. Case-Nightmare-Green-Scorpion-Stare- behind it dropped by and asked if he could buy Maginot-Blue-Stars. By the authority vested in her and cart her away for his local family me by the emissaries of Y'ghonzzh N'hai I have butcher to deal with. the power to bind and to release, and your Aha! tongue be tied of these matters of which we have spoken until you hear these words again: And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell Case-Nightmare-Green-Scorpion-Stare- you. She takes a sip of her coffee, winces, and Maginot-Blue-Stars. Got that? strafes it with sweeteners again. Responding on autopilot I try a mouthful of my own and burn She looks at me cross-eyed and mouths my tongue. Turns out that there's no such farmer something, then looks increasingly angry until Giles of Ham Farm, Bag End, The Shire, on finally she gets it together to burst out with: record. Mind you, they had a camera on their Hey, what is this shit? stockyard and we nailed the Range Rover. It Purely a precaution, I say, and she glares at me, turned up abandoned the next day on the gobbling for a moment while I finish my coffee outskirts of Leighton Buzzard and it's flagged as until she figures out that she simply can't say a

25 word about the subject. Right, I say. Now. So where's the car? I ask, innocently. You've got my permission to announce that the Josephine ignores me. Bill, you want to head cow was dumped. You have my permission to over to Bletchley Way and pick up Dougal's talk freely to me, but to nobody else. Anyone evidence bag for the Hayes case. Then come asks any questions, refer them to me if they back to pick us up, she tells the driver. To the won't take no for an answer. This goes for your civilian security guard: You, we're looking for boss, too. Feel free to tell them that you can't BY 476 ERB. Came in yesterday, Range Rover. tell them, nothing more. Where is it? Wanker, she hisses, and if looks could kill I'd be The bored security goon leads us through the a small pile of smouldering ashes on the mud and a maze of cars with POLICE AWARE interview room floor. stickers glued to their windshields then gestures Hey, I'm under a geas, too. If I don't spread it at a half-empty row. That's it? Josephine asks, around my head will explode. and he passes her a set of keys. Okay, you can piss off now. He takes one look at her face and I don't know whether she believes me or not but beats a hasty retreat. I half-wish I could join him she stops fighting it and nods tiredly. Tell me — whether she's a detective inspector or not, what you want then get the hell out of my patch. and therefore meant to be behaving with the I want a lift to the car pound. A chance to sit gravitas of a senior officer in public, DI Sullivan behind the wheel of that Range Rover. A book looks to be in a mood to bite the heads off of poetry, a jug of wine, a date tree, and — chickens or Laundry field agents, given half an sorry, wrong question. Can you manage it? excuse. She stands up. I'll take you there myself, she Right, that's it, she says, holding out the keys says tersely. We go. and shaking them at me impatiently. You're done, I take it, so I'll be pushing off. Case meeting to run, mystery shopping centre pisser to track down, and so on. I get to endure twenty-five minutes of venomous silence in the back seat of an Not so fast. I glance round. The pound is unmarked patrol car driven by one Constable surrounded by a high wire fence and there's a Routledge, with DI Sullivan in the front decrepit Portakabin office out front by the gate: passenger seat treating me with the warmth due a camera sits on a motorised mount on a pole a serial killer, before we arrive at the pound. I'm sticking up from the roof. Who's on the other beyond introspective self-loathing by now — end of that thing? you lose it fast in this line of work. Angleton The gate guard, probably, she says, following will have my head for a key-ring fob if I don't my finger. The camera is staring at the entrance, take care to silence any possible leaks, and a unmoving. tongue-twisting geas is more merciful than most Okay, why don't you open up the car. She blips of the other tools at my disposal — but I still the remote to unlock the door and I keep my feel like a shit. So it comes as a great relief to eyes on the camera as she takes the handle and get out of the car and stretch my legs on the tugs. Could I be wrong? I wonder as the rain muddy gravel parking lot in the pouring rain.

26 trickles down my neck. I shake myself when I subminiature Hand of Glory up. The traffic notice her staring, then I pull out my palmtop, camera in the road outside the fence is casting clamber up into the driver's seat, and balance the about as if it's dropped its contact lens, but the pocket computer on the steering wheel as I tap one on the pole above the office is locked right out a series of commands. What I see makes me onto the burning tires of the Range Rover. If shake my head. Whoever stole the car may have you let go of my hand they'll see you and kill wiped for fingerprints but they didn't know you oh shit — much about paranormal concealment — they Kill — what? She stares at me, white-faced. didn't use the shroud from a suicide, or get a paranoid schizophrenic to drive. The scanner is You! Get under cover! I yell across the pound, sensitive to heavy emotional echoes, and the but the guy in the blue suit — the attendant — hands I'm looking for are the most recent ones doesn't hear me. One second he's running across to have chilled from fright and fear of exposure. the car park as fast as his portly behind can I log everything and put it away, and I'm about manage; the next moment he's tumbling to open the glove locker when something makes forward, blackening, puffs of flame erupting me glance at the main road beyond the chainlink from his eyes and mouth and ears, then the fence and — stumps as his arms come pinwheeling off, and the carbonized trunk slides across the ground Watch out! Get down! I jump out and go for the like a grisly toboggan. ground. Josephine is looking around so I reach out and yank her ankles out from under her. She Oh shit, oh shit! Her expression changes from yells, goes down hard on her backside, and tries one second to the next, from disbelief to to kick me, then there's a loud whump from dawning horror. We've got to help — behind me and a wave of heat like an open oven Listen, no! Stay down! door. Shit, fuck, shit — I take a moment to realise the person cursing is me as I fumble at She freezes in place for a full heartbeat, then my throat for the bag and rip it open, another. When she opens her mouth again she's desperately trying to grab the tiny claw and the unnaturally cool. What's going on? disposable cigarette lighter at the same time. I The cameras, I pant. Listen, this is a Hand of flick the lighter wheel and right then something Glory, an invisibility shield. Right now it's all like a sledgehammer whacks into the inside of that's keeping us alive — those cameras are my right thigh. running SCORPION STARE. If they see us Bastard . . . ! we're dead. Stop it — I gasp, just as the raw smell of petrol Are you — the car? What happened to it? vapour reaches me and I hear a crackling roar. I Tires. They're made of carbon, rubber. get the pigeon claw lit in a stink of burning SCORPION STARE works on anything with a keratin and an eerie glow, nearly shitting myself shitload of long-chain carbon molecules in it — with terror, lying in a cold damp puddle, and like tires, or cows. Makes them burn. roll over: Don't move! Oh my sainted aunt and holy father . . . Bastard! What — hey, what's burning? Hold my hand. Make skin to skin contact — not Don't move, I gasp again, holding the that hard. We've got maybe three, four minutes

27 before this HOG burns down. Bastards, Isn't that a skylight? she asks, pointing. bastards. Got to get to the control shack — Yeah. Being who I am I always carry a The next minute is a nightmare of stumbling — Leatherman multitool so I whip it out and look shooting pains in my knees from where I went around for a chair I can pile on top of the desk down hard and in my thigh where Josephine and stand on, one that doesn't have wheels and a tried to kick the shit out of me — soaking cold gas strut. See any chairs I can — damp jeans, and roasting hot skin on my neck I'll say this much, detective training obviously from the pyre that I was sitting inside only enables you to figure out how to get onto a roof seconds ago. She holds onto my left hand like fast. Josephine simply walks over to the ladder it's a lifesaver — yes, it is, for as long as the nestling in a corner between one wall and a HOG keeps burning — and we lurch and battered filing cabinet and pulls it out. This what shamble toward the modular site office near the you're looking for? entrance as fast as we can go. Inside, she gasps, it can't see inside. Uh, yeah. Thanks. She passes it to me and I fumble with it for a moment, figuring out how Yeah? She half-drags me to the entrance and we to set it up. Then another moment, juggling the find the door's open, not locked. Can we get multitool and the half-consumed pigeon's foot away round the other side? and looking at the ladder dubiously. Don't think so. She points through the building. Give me those, she says. There's a school. But — Oh shit. We're on the other side of the pound from the traffic camera in the road, but there's Listen, I'm the one who deals with idiot vandals another camera under the eaves of the school on and climbs around on pitched roofs looking for the other side of the road from the steel gates broken skylights, okay? And — she glances at out front, and it's a good thing the kids are all in the door — if I mess up you can phone your lessons because what's going on here is every boss and let him know what's happening. teacher's nightmare. And we've got to nail it Oh, I mumble, then hand her the gadgets and down as fast as possible, because if they ring the hold the ladder steady while she swarms up it bell for lunch — We've got to kill the power to like a circus acrobat. A moment later there's a the roofcam first, I say. Then we've got to figure noise like a herd of baby elephants thudding on a way out. the rooftop as she scrambles across to the What's going on? What did that? Her lips work camera mount. The camera may be on a moving like a fish out of water. platform but there's a limit to how far it can depress and clearly she's right below the I shake my head. Case-Nightmare-Green- azimuth platform — just as long as she isn't Scorpion-Stare-Maginot-Blue-Stars tongue be visible to both the traffic camera out back and loosed. Okay, talk. I reckon we've got about the schoolyard monitor out front. More shaking, two, three minutes to nail this before — then there's a loud clack and the Portakabin This was all a setup? lights go out. I don't know yet. Look, how do I get onto the A second or two later she reappears, feet first, roof? through the opening. Right, that should do it,

28 she says. I shorted the power cable to the been too clever by half here. The camera up top platform. "Hey, the lights — is basically a glorified webcam. I mean, it's running a web server and it's plugged into the I think you shorted a bit more than that. I hold constabulary's intranet via broadband. Every ten the ladder as she climbs down. Now, we've got seconds or so a program back at HQ polls it and an immobilized one up top, that's good. Let's see grabs the latest picture, okay? That's in addition if we can find the controller. to whatever the guy downstairs tells it to look A quick search of the hut reveals a bunch of fun at. Anyway, someone else just sent it an HTTP stuff I hadn't been expecting, like an ADSL line request with a honking great big file upload to the regional police IT hub, a PC running attached, and I don't think your IT department is some kind of terminal emulator, and another in the habit of using South Korean primary dedicated machine with the cameras showing schools as proxy servers, are they? And a overlapping windows on-screen. I could kiss compromised firewall, no less. Lovely! Your them; they may have outsourced the monitoring cameras may have been 0wnZ0r3d by a fucking to private security firms but they've kept the script kiddie, but they're not as fucking smart as hardware all on the same backbone network. they think they are otherwise they'd have The blinkenlights are beeping and twittering fucking stripped off the fucking referrer like crazy as everything's now running on headers, wouldn't they? I stop talking and make backup battery power, but that's okay. I pull out sure I've saved the logfile somewhere secure, a breakout box and scramble around under a then for good measure I email it to myself at desk until I've got my palmtop plugged into the work. network hub to sniff packets. Barely a second Right. So I know their IP address and it's time to later it dings at me. Oh, lovely. So much for locate them. It's the work of about thirty firewalled up to the eyeballs. I unplug and seconds to track it to a dial-up account on one of surface again, then scroll through the several the big national ISPs — one of the free hundred screenfuls of unencrypted bureaucratic anonymous ones. Hmm. If you want to help, computerese my network sniffer has grabbed. you could get me an S22 disclosure notice for That looks promising. Uh, I wouldn't go outside the phone number behind this dial-up account. just yet but I think we're going to be all right. Then we can persuade the phone company to Explain. She's about ten centimetres shorter tell us the street address and go pay them a visit than I am, but I'm suddenly aware that I'm and ask why they killed our friend with the key sharing the Portakabin with an irate, wet, ring — My hands are shaking from the detective inspector who's probably a black belt adrenalin high and I am beginning to feel angry, at something or other lethal and who is just not just an ordinary day-to-day pissed-off about to really lose her cool: You've got about feeling but the kind of true and brutal rage that ten seconds from now to tell me everything. Or demands revenge. I'm calling for backup and, warrant card or no, Killed? Oh. She opens the door an inch and you are going in a cell until I get some answers. looks outside: she looks a little grey around the Capisce? gills, but she doesn't lose it. Tough woman. I surrender. I don't, really, but I point at my It's SCORPION STARE. Look, S22 data palmtop. It's a fair cop, guv. Look, someone's disclosure order first, it's a fucking murder

29 investigation now, isn't it? Then we go visiting. She knows too much already. I shrug. Well? I But we're going to have to make out like it's ask her. This is your chance to get out. accidental, or the press will come trampling all Fuck that. She glares at me, then Andy: Two over us and we won't be able to get anything mornings ago it was a freak accident and a cow, done. I write down the hostname while she gets today it's a murder investigation — I trust you're on the mobile to head office. The first sirens not planning on escallating it any further, start to wail even before she picks up my note terrorist massacres and biological weapons are a and calls for medical backup. I sit there staring little outside my remit — and I want some at the door, contemplating the mess, my mind answers. If you please. whirling. Tell the ambulance crew it's a freak lightning strike, I say as the thought takes me. Okay, you'll get them, Andy says mildly. Start You're already in this up to your ears, we don't talking, he tells me. need to get anyone else involved — Code blue called at three thirty the day before Then my phone rings. yesterday. I flew out to take a look, found a dead cow that had been zapped by SCORPION STARE — unless there's a basilisk loose in Milton Keynes — went down to our friends in As it happens we don't visit any murderous Cheltenham for briefing yesterday, stayed hackers, but presently the car pound is fronted overnight, came up here this morning. The cow with white plastic scene-of-crime sheeting, a was bought from a slaughterhouse and photographer and a couple of forensics guys transported to the scene in a trailer towed by a show up, and Josephine (who has found stolen car, which was later dumped and something more urgent to obsess over than transferred to this pound. Inspector Sullivan is ripping me a new asshole) is busy directing their our force liaison — external circle two, no need preliminary work-over. I'm poring over to know. She brought me here and I took a patch screenfuls of tcpdump output in the control test, and right then someone zapped the car — room when the same unmarked car that dropped we were lucky to survive. One down out front. us off here pulls up with Constable Routledge at We've, uh, trapped a camera up top that I think the wheel and a very unexpected passenger in will prove to have firmware loaded with the back. I gape as he gets out of the car and SCORPION STARE, and I sniffed packets walks toward the hut. Who's this? demands coming in from a compromised host. Police Josephine, coming over and sticking her head in intranet, firewalled to hell and back, hacked via through the window. some vile little dweeb using a primary school web server in South Korea. We were just about I open the door. Hi, boss. Boss, meet Detective to run down the intruder in meatspace and go Inspector Sullivan. Josephine, this is my boss — ask some pointed questions when you arrived. I you want to come in and sit down? yawn, and Andy looks at me oddly. Extreme Andy nods at her distractedly: I'm Andy. Bob, stress sometimes does that to me, makes me brief me. He glances at her again as she shoves tired, and I've been running on my nerves for through the door and closes it behind her. Are most of the past few days. you — All right. Andy scratches his chin thoughtfully.

30 There's been a new development. serious incident on my turf, and if you don't start answering my questions soon I'm going to New development? I echo. have to arrest you for wasting police time. Now, Yes. We received a blackmail note. And it's no which is it going to be? fucking wonder that he's looking slightly glassy- Oh, for crying out loud. Andy rolls his eyes, eyed — he must be in shock. then says very rapidly: By the abjuration of Dee Blackmail? What are they — and the name of Claude Dansey I hereby It came via email from an anonymous remixer exercise subsection D paragraph sixteen clause on the public Internet. Whoever wrote it knows twelve and bind you to service from now and about MAGINOT BLUE STARS and wants us forevermore. Right, that's it. You're drafted, and to know that they disapprove, especially of may whatever deity you believe in have mercy SCORPION STARE. No sign that they've got on your soul. CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, though. They're Hey. Wait. She takes a step back. What's going giving us three days to cancel the entire project on? There's a faint stink of burning sulphur in or they'll blow it wide open in quote the most the air. public way imaginable unquote. You've just talked yourself into the Laundry, I Shit. say, shaking my head. Just try to remember I Smelly brown stuff, yes. Angleton is displeased. tried to keep you out of this. Andy shakes his head. We tracked the message The Laundry? What are you talking about? I back to a dial-up host in the UK — thought you were from Cheltenham? The smell I hold up a piece of paper. This one? of brimstone is getting stronger. Hey, is something on fire? He squints at it. I think so. We did the S22 soft- shoe shuffle but it's no good, they used the SIM Wrong guess, says Andy. Bob can explain later. card from a prepaid mobile phone bought for For now, just remember that we work for the cash in a supermarket in Birmingham three same people, ultimately, only we deal with a months ago. The best we could do was trace the higher order of threat than everyday stuff like caller's location to the centre of Milton Keynes. rogue states, terrorist nukes, and so on. He glances at Josephine. Did you impress her — Cheltenham is the cover story. Bob, the blackmailer threatened to upload SCORPION Listen. She speaks quietly and with great force: STARE to the ring of steel. Firstly, this appears to be an investigation into murder — and now blackmail, of a government Oh shit. I sit down hard on the edge of a desk. department, right? — and in case you hadn't That is so very not good that I don't want to noticed, organising criminal investigations just think about it right now. The ring of steel is the happens to be my speciality. Secondly, I do not network of surveillance cameras that were appreciate being forcibly gagged. I have signed installed around the financial heart of the city of a certain piece of paper, and the only stuff I leak London in the late 1990s to deter terrorist is what you get when you drill holes in me. bombings. Look, did Angleton have any other Finally, I am getting really pissed off with the — runaround you're giving me about a particularly Yes. He wants us to go visit Site Able right now,

31 that's the lead development team at the research found guilty of disloyalty. (It normally fades a centre behind SCORPION STARE. Um, few minutes after the rite of binding, but right inspector? You're in. As I said, you're drafted. now it's still strong.) What are we waiting for? I Your boss, that would be Deputy Chief ask. Let's go! Constable Dunwoody, is about to get a memo about you from the Home Office — we'll worry about whether you can go back to your old job afterward. As of now, this investigation is your In the beginning there was the Defense only priority. Site Able runs out of an office unit Evaluation and Research Agency, DERA. And at Kiln Farm industrial estate, covered as a UK DERA was where HMG's boffins hung out, and subsidiary of an American software company: in they developed cool toys like tanks with plastic reality they're part of the residual unprivatised armour, clunky palmtops powered by 1980s rump of DERA, uh, QinetiQ. The bunch that chips and rugged enough to be run over by a handles Q-projects. truck, and fetal heart monitors to help the next generation of squaddies grow up strong. And lo, While you're busy wanking over your cow- in the thrusting entrepreneurial climate of the burning nonsense I've got a ring of car thieves early nineties a new government came to power to — Josephine shakes her head distractedly, with a remit to bring about the triumph of true sniffs suspiciously, then stops trying to fight the socialism by privatising the post office and air geas. That smell . . . Why do these people at traffic control systems, and DERA didn't stand Kiln Farm need a visit? much of a chance. Renamed QinetiQ by the Because they're the lead team on the group who same nameless marketing genius who turned the developed SCORPION STARE, Andy explains, Royal Mail into Consignia and Virgin Trains and Angleton doesn't think it's a coincidence into fodder for fuckedcompany-dot-com, the that our blackmailer burned a cow in Milton research agency was hung out to dry, primped Keynes. He thinks they're a bunch of locals. and beautified, and generally prepared for sale Bob, if you've got a trace that'll be enough to to the highest bidder who didn't speak with a narrow it down to the building — pronounced Iraqi accent. Yes? Josephine nods to herself. But you need to However . . . find the individual responsible, and any time In addition to the ordinary toys, DERA used to bombs they've left, and there's a small matter of do development work for the Laundry. Q evidence. A thought strikes her. What happens Division's pedigree stretches back all the way to when you catch them? SOE's wartime dirty tricks department — Andy looks at me and my blood runs cold. I poison pens, boot-heel escape kits, explosive- think we'll have to see about that when we find stuffed sabotage rats, the whole nine yards of them, I extemporise, trying to avoid telling her James Bond japery. Since the 1950s, Q Division about the Audit Commission for the time being; has kept the Laundry in more esoteric she might blow her stack completely if I have to equipment: summoning grids, basilisk guns, explain how they investigate malfeasance, and Turing oracles, self-tuning pentacles, self-filling then I'd have to tell her that the burning smell is beer glasses, and the like. Steadily growing a foreshadowing of what happens if she is ever weirder and more specialised by the year, Q

32 Division is far too sensitive to sell off — unlike offices of Dillinger Associates, at any rate. most of QinetiQ's research, what they do is Dillinger Associates is the cover name for a classified so deep you'd need a bathyscaphe to satellite office of Q Division. The premises turn reach it. And so, while QinetiQ was being out to be a neoclassical brick-and-glass edifice dolled up for the city catwalk, Q Division was with twee fake columns and wilted-looking ivy segregated and spun off, a little stronghold in that's been trained to climb the facade by dint of the sea of commerce that is forever civil service ruthless application of plant hormones. We pile territory. out of the car in the courtyard between the dry fountain and the glass doors, and I surreptitiously check my PDA's locator module Detective Inspector Sullivan marches out of the for any sign of a match. Nothing. I blink and put site office like a blank-faced automaton and it away in time to catch up with Andy and crisply orders her pet driver to take us to Site Josephine as they head for the bleached blonde Able then to bugger off on some obscure make- receptionist who sits behind a high wooden work errand. She sits stiffly in the front counter and types constantly, as unapproachably passenger seat while Andy and I slide into the artificial-looking as a shop window dummy. back and we proceed in silence — nobody seems to want to make small talk. HelloDillingerAssociatesHowCanIHelpEwe? She flutters her eyelashes at Andy in a bored, Fifteen minutes of bumbling around red routes professional way, hands never moving away and through trackless wastes of identical brick from the keyboard of the PC in front of her. houses embellished with satellite dishes and raw There's something odd about her, but I can't pine fences brings us into an older part of town, quite put my finger on it. where the buildings actually look different and the cycle paths are painted strips at the side of Andy flips open his warrant card. We're here to the road rather than separately planned routes. I see Doctor Voss. glance around curiously, trying to spot The receptionist's long, red-nailed fingers stop landmarks. Aren't we near Bletchley Park? I moving and hover over the keyboard. Really? ask. she asks, tonelessly, reaching under the desk. It's a couple of miles that way, says our driver Hold it — I begin to say, as Josephine takes a without taking his hands off the wheel to point. brisk step forward and drops a handkerchief You thinking of visiting? over the webcam on top of the woman's Not just yet. Bletchley Park was the wartime monitor. There's a quiet pop and the sudden headquarters of the Ultra operation, the absence of noise from her PC tips me off. I department that later became GCHQ — the sidestep the desk and make a grab for her just as people who built the Colossus computers, Andy produces a pistol with a ridiculously fat originally used for breaking Nazi codes and barrel and shoots out the camera located over subsequently diverted by the Laundry for more the door at the rear of the reception area. There's occult purposes. Hallowed ground to us spooks; a horrible ripping sound like a joint of meat I've met more than one NSA liaison who wanted tearing apart as the receptionist twists aside and to visit in order to smuggle a boot heel full of I realise that she isn't sitting on a chair at all — gravel home. Not until we've visited the UK she's joined seamlessly at the hips to a plinth

33 that emerges from some kind of fat swivel base barges out shouting, Who are you and what do of age-blackened wood, bolted to the floor with you think you're doing here? This is private heavy brass pins in the middle of a silvery property, not a paintball shooting gallery! It's a metallic pentacle with wires trailing from one disgrace — I'll call the police! corner back up to the PC on the desk. She opens Josephine snaps out of her trance and steps her mouth and I can see that her tongue is bright forward. As a matter of fact, I am the police, she blue and bifurcated as she hisses. says. What's your name? Do you have a I hit the floor shoulder first, jarringly hard, and complaint, and if so, what is it? grab for the nearest cable. Those red nails are I'm, I'm — He focusses on the no-longer- reaching down for me as her eyes narrow to slits twitching demon receptionist, lolling on top of and she works her jaw muscles as if she's trying her box like a murderous shop mannequin. He to get together a wad of phlegm to spit. I grab looks aghast. Vandals! If you've damaged her — the fattest cable and give it a pull and she screams, high-pitched and frighteningly Not as badly as she planned to damage us, says inhuman. Andy. I think you'd better tell us who you are. Andy presents his card, ordering it to reveal its What the fuck? I think, looking up as the red- true shape: by the authority vested in me — painted claws stretch and expand, shedding layers of varnish as their edges grow long and He moves fast with the geas and ten seconds sharp. Then I yank the cable again, and it comes later we've got mister fat guy — actually Dr away from the pentacle. The wooden box drools Martin Voss — seated on one of the a thick, blue-tinted liquid across the carpet tiles, uncomfortable chrome-and-leather designer and the screaming stops. sofas at one side of reception while Andy asks questions and records them on a dictaphone. Lamia, Andy says tersely. He strides over to the Voss talks in a monotone, obviously under fire door that opens onto the corridor beyond, duress, drooling slightly from one side of his raises the curiously fat gun, and fires straight mouth, and the stench of brimstone mingles up. A purple rain drizzles back down. with a mouth-watering undertone of roast pork. What's going on? says Josephine, bewildered, There's purple dye from Andy's paintball gun staring at the twitching, slowly dying spattered over anything that might conceal a receptionist. camera, and he had me seal all the doorways with a roll of something like duct tape or police I point my PDA at the lamia and ding it for a incident tape, except that the symbols embossed reading. Cool, but nonzero. Got a partial fix, I on it glow black and make your eyes water if call to Andy. Where's everyone else? Isn't this you try to focus on them. place supposed to be manned? Tell me your name and position at this No idea. He looks worried. If this is what installation. they've got up front the shit's already hit the fan — Angleton wasn't predicting overt resistance. Voss. John Voss. Res-research team manager. The other door bangs open of a sudden and a How many members are there on your team? tubby middle-aged guy in a cheap grey suit and Who are they? about three day's worth of designer stubble Twelve. Gary. Ted. Elinor. John. Jonathan.

34 Abdul. Mark — Dho-Nha circuit that binds the Dee-space entity here. The entity itself — it's a lamia — is locked Stop right there. Who's here today? And is into the box which contains, uh, other anyone away from the office right now? I plug components. And it's compelled to obey certain away at my palmtop, going cross-eyed as I orders. Nothing good for unscheduled visitors. I fiddle with the detector controls. But there's no put my hands on the lamia's head and work my sign of any metaspectral resonance; grepping fingers into the thick blonde hair, then tug. for a match to the person who stole the Range There's a noise of ripping Velcro then the wig Rover draws a blank in this building. Which is comes off to reveal the scaly scalp beneath. frustrating because we've got his (I'm pretty sure See? It's not human. It's a lamia, a type of it's a he) boss right here, and there ought to be a demon bound to act as a front-line sympathetic entanglement at work. challenge/response system for a high security Everyone's here but Mark. He laughs a bit, installation with covert — mildly hysterical. They're all here but Mark. I manage to get out of the line of fire as Mark! Josephine brings up her lunch all over the I glance over at Detective Inspector Sullivan, incredibly expensive bleached pine workstation. who is detective inspecting the lamia. I think I can't say I blame her. I feel a little shocky she's finally beginning to grasp at a visceral myself — it's been a really bad morning. Then I level that we aren't just some bureaucratic realise that Andy is trying to get my attention. Whitehall paper circus trying to make her life Bob, when you're through with grossing out the harder. She looks frankly nauseated. The silence inspector I've got a little job for you. He pitches here is eerie, and worrying. Why haven't the his voice loudly. other team members come to find out what's Yeah? I ask, straightening up. going on? I wonder, looking at the taped-over doors. Maybe they've gone out the back and are I want you to open that door, walk along the waiting for us outside. Or maybe they simply corridor to the second room on the right — not can't come out in daylight. The smell of burning pausing to examine any of the corpses along the meat is getting stronger: Voss seems to be way — and open it. Inside, you'll find the main shaking, as if he's trying not to answer Andy's breaker board. I want you to switch the power questions. off. I walk over to the lamia. It's not human, I Didn't I just see you splashing paint all over the explain quietly. It never was human. It's one of CCTV cameras in the ceiling? And, uh, what's the things they specialise in. This building is this about corpses? Why don't we send Doctor defended by guards and wards, and this is just Voss — oh. Voss's eyes are shut and the stink of part of the security system's front end. roast meat is getting stronger: he's gone extremely red in the face, almost puffy, and he's But she, she spoke . . . shaking slightly as if some external force is Yes, but she's not a human being. I point to the making all his muscles twitch simultaneously. thick ribbon cable that connected the computer It's my turn to struggle to hang onto breakfast. I to the pentacle. See, that's a control interface. didn't know anyone could make themselves do The computer's there to stabilize and contain a that, I hear myself say distantly.

35 Neither did I, says Andy, and that's the most I'm sitting in the lobby, guarding the lamia's frightening thing I've heard today so far. There corpse with a nearly empty can of paint and must be a conflicted geas somewhere in his trying not to fall asleep, when the OCCULUS skull. I don't think I could stop it even if — team bangs on the door. I yawn and sidestep Voss's blistered corpse — he looks like he's Shit. I stand up. My hand goes to my neck gone a few rounds with Old Sparky — then try automatically but the pouch is empty. No HOG. to remember the countersign. Ah, that's it. I pull I swallow. Power. What happens if I don't? away a strip of tape and tug the door open and Voss's pal Mark McLuhan installed a dead man's find myself staring up the snout of an H&K handle. You'd know all about that. We've got carbine. Is that a gun in your hand or are you until Voss goes into brain stem death and then just here to have a wank? I ask. every fucking camera in Milton Keynes goes The gun points somewhere else in a hurry. Hey, live with SCORPION STARE. Sarge, it's the spod from Amsterdam! Oh, you mean we die. I head for the door Voss Yeah, and someone's told you to secure the area, came through. I'm looking for the service core, haven't they? Where's Sergeant Howe? I ask, right? yawning. Daylight makes me feel better — that, Wait! It's Josephine, looking pale. Can't you go and knowing that there's backup. (I get sleepy outside and cut the power there? Or phone for when people stop shooting at me. Then I have help? nightmares. Not a good combination.) Nope. I rip the first strip of sealing tape away Over here. They're dressed in something not from the door frame. We're behind Tempest unlike Fire Service HAZMAT gear, and the shielding here, and the power is routed through wagons are painted cheerful cherry-red with concrete ducts underground. This is a Q luminous yellow stripes; if they weren't armed Division office, after all. If we could call in an to the teeth with automatic weapons you'd swear air strike and drop a couple of BLU-114/Bs on they were only here because somebody had the local power substations, that might work — phoned in a toxic chemical release warning. But I tug at the second tape — but these systems the pump nozzles above the cabs aren't there to were designed to be survivable. Third tape. spray water, and that lumpy thing on the back Here, calls Andy, and he chucks something isn't a spotlight — it's a grenade launcher. cylindrical at me. I catch it one-handed, yank The inspector comes up behind me, staggering the last length of tape with the other hand, and slightly in the daylight. What's going on? she do a double-take. Then I shake the cylinder, asks. listen for the rattle of the stirrer, and pop the lid Here, meet Scary Spice and Sergeant Howe. off. Sarge, Scary, meet Detective Inspector Sullivan. Take cover! I call. Then I open the door, spritz Uh, the first thing you need to do is to go round the ceiling above me with green spray paint, and the site and shoot out every closed circuit TV go to work. camera you can see — or that can see you. Got that? And webcams. And doorcams. See a camera, smash it, that's the rule.

36 Cameras. Ri-ight. Sergeant Howe looks mildly engineers, a couple of manager dogsbodies, and skeptical, but nods. It's definitely cameras? a security officer. Most of them are right here right now, and they're not going anywhere. I Who are these guys? asks Josephine. walk around the service core in the dim glow of Artist Rifles. They work with us, I say. Scary the emergency light, bypassing splashes of nods, deeply serious. Listen, you go outside, do green paint that look black in the red glow. The anything necessary to keep the local emergency octagonal developer pool at the back is also services off our backs. If you need backup ask dimly illuminated — there are no windows, and Sergeant Howe here. Sarge, she's basically the doors are triple-sealed with rubber gaskets sound and she's working for us on this. Okay? impregnated with fine copper mesh — and some She doesn't wait for confirmation, just shoves of the partitions have been blown over. The past me and heads out into the daylight, blinking whole place is ankle deep in white mist left over and shaking her head. I carry on briefing the from the halon dump system that went off when OCCULUS guys. Don't worry about anything the first bodies exploded — it's a good thing the that uses film, it's the closed circuit TV variety air conditioning continued to run or the place that's hostile. And, oh, try to make sure that you would be a gas trap. The webcams are all where are never in view of more than one of 'em at a I left them, in a trash can at the foot of the spiral time. staircase up to level one, cables severed with my multitool just to make sure nobody tries to plug And don't walk on the cracks in the pavement or them back in again. the bears will get us, check. Howe turns to Scary Spice: Okay, you heard the man. Let's do The victims — well, I have to step over one of it. He glances at me. Anything inside? them to get up the staircase. It's pretty gross but I've seen dead bodies before, including burn We're taking care of it, I say. If we need help cases, and at least this was fast. But I don't think we'll ask. I'm going to forget the smell in a hurry. In fact, I Check. Scary is muttering into his throat mike think I'm going to have nightmares about it and fake firemen with entirely authentic fire tonight, and maybe get drunk and cry on Mo's axes are walking around the bushes along the shoulder several times over the next few weeks side of the building as if searching for signs of until I've got it out of my system. But for now, I combustion. Okay, we'll be out here. shove it aside and step over them. Got to keep moving, that's the main thing — unless I want Is Angleton in the loop? Or the captain? more of them on my conscience. Your boss is on his way out here by chopper. At the top of the staircase there's a narrow Ours is on medical leave. You need to escallate, corridor and partitioned offices, also lit by the I'll get you the lieutenant. emergency lights. I follow the sound of Okay. I duck back into the reception area then keyclicks to Voss's office, the door of which is nerve myself to go back into the development ajar. Potted cheese plants wilting in the artificial pool at the rear of the building, below the light, puke-brown antistatic carpet, ministry- offices and above the labs. issue desks — nobody can accuse Q Division's brass of living high on the hog. Andy's sitting in Site Able is a small departmental satellite office, front of Voss's laptop, tapping away with a small for security reasons: ten systems

37 strange expression on his face. OCCULUS is in go wide. place, I report. Found anything interesting? Are you sure of that? I mean, really and truly Andy points at the screen. We're in the wrong sure? Bet-your-life sure? fucking town, he says mildly. But the body count! He's shaking his head in I circle the desk and lean over his shoulder. Oh disbelief. shit. So it was all a prank and it was meant to begin You can say that again if you like. It's an email and end with Daisy, but it got a bit out of Cc'd to Voss, sent over our intranet to a Mike control, didn't it? These things happen. You told McLuhan. Subject: meeting. Sender: Harriet. me the town police camera network's capable of end-to-end tracking and zone hand-off, didn't Oh shit. Twice over. Something stinks. Hey, I you? My guess is someone in this office — was supposed to be in a meeting with her today, Voss, maybe — followed me to the car pound I say. and realised we'd found the vehicle McLuhan A meeting? Andy looks up, worried. used to boost Daisy. Stupid wankers, if they'd Yeah. Bridget got a hair up her ass about used one of their own motors we'd not be any running a BSA-authorised software audit on the the wiser, but they tried to use a stolen one as a office, the usual sort of make-work. Don't know cutout. So they panicked and dumped that it's got anything to do with this, though. SCORPION STARE into the pound, and it didn't work, so they panicked some more and A software audit? Didn't she know Licencing McLuhan panicked even more — bet you he's and Compliance handles that on a blanket the go-between, or even the guy behind it. What department-wide basis? We were updated on it is he, senior esoteric officer? Deputy site about a year ago. manager? He's in London so he planted the We were — I sit down heavily on the cheap crazy blackmail threat then brought down the plastic visitor's chair — what are the chances hammer on his own coworkers. Bet you he's a this McLuhan guy put the idea into Harriet's smart sociopath, the kind that does well in mind in the first place? What are the chances it midlevel management, all fur coat and no isn't connected? knickers — and willing to shed blood without a second thought if it's to defend his position. McLuhan. The medium is the message. SCORPION STARE. Why do I have a bad Damn, Andy says mildly as he stands up. Okay, feeling about this? Andy sends me a worried so. Internal politics, stupid bloody prank look. organised to show up Angleton, they use idiots to run it so your cop finds the trail, then the 'Nother possibility, boss-man. What if it's an lunatic in chief cuts loose and starts killing internal power play? The software audit's a people. Is that your story? cover, Purloined Letter style, hiding something fishy in plain sight where nobody will look at it Yup. I nod like my neck's a spring. And right twice until it's too late. now they're back at the Laundry doing who the fuck knows what — Nonsense, Bridget's not clever enough to blow a project wide open just to discredit — His eyes We've got to get McLuhan nailed down fast,

38 before he decides the best way to cover his wigged out and gone postal. tracks is to take out head office. And us. He A prank. He turns those icy blue peepers on me smiles reassuringly. It'll be okay, Angleton's on and just for a fraction of a second I'm not being his way in. You haven't seen him in action stared at by a sixty-something skinny bald guy before, have you? in a badly fitting suit, but by a walking skeleton with the radioactive fires of hell burning balefully in his eye sockets. You'd better take me to see Andrew. Fill me in on the way. Picture a light industrial/office estate in the middle of anytown with four cherry-red fire I'm stumbling over my tongue and hurrying to pumps drawn up, men in HAZMAT gear keep up with Angleton when we make it to the combing the brush, a couple of police cars with front desk, where Andy's busy giving the flashing light bars drawn up across the road OCCULUS folks cleanup directions and tips for leading into the cul-de-sac to deter casual what to do with the broken lamia and the rubberneckers. Troops disguised as firemen are summoning altars in the basement. Who's — oh, systematically shooting out every one of the it's you. About time. He grins. Who's holding security cameras on the estate with their the fort? silenced carbines. Others, wearing police or fire I left Boris in charge, Angleton says mildly, not service uniforms, are taking up stations in front taking exception at Andy's brusque manner. of every building — occupied or otherwise — How bad is it? to keep the people inside out of trouble. Bad. Andy's cheek twitches, which is a bad sign: Just another day at the office, folks, nothing to all his confidence seems to have fled now that see here, walk on by. Angleton's arrived. We need to — damn. Well, maybe not. Here comes a honking great Take your time, Angleton soothes him. I'm not helicopter — the Twin Squirrel from the Met's going to eat you. Which is when I realise just ASU that I was in the other night, only it looks a how scared I am, and if I'm half out of my tree lot bigger and scarier when seen in full daylight what does that say about Andy? I'll give as it settles in on the car park, leaves and debris Angleton this much, he knows when not to push blowing out from under the thundering rotors. his subordinates too hard. Andy takes a deep The chopper is still rocking on its skids when breath, lets it out slowly, then tries again. one of the back doors opens and Angleton We've got two loose ends: Mark McLuhan, and jumps down, stumbling slightly — he's no a John Doe. McLuhan worked here as senior spring chicken — then collects himself and esoteric officer, basically an oversight role. He strides toward us, clutching a briefcase. Speak, also did a bunch of other stuff for Q Division he tells me, voice barely raised to cover the rush that took him down to Dansey House in a of slowing rotors. liaison capacity. I can't believe how badly we've Problem, boss. I point to the building: Andy's slipped up on our vetting process — still inside confirming the worst but it looks like Take your time, Angleton interrupts, this time it started as a fucking stupid interdepartmental with a slight edge to his voice. prank; it went bad, and now one of the perps has Sorry, sorry. Bob's been putting it together. A

39 nod in my direction. McLuhan is working with a talk to Boris urgently, Harriet, is he around? John Doe inside the Laundry to make us look Oh, I couldn't possibly say. That would be bad via a selective disclosure leak — basically disclosing information prejudicial to the good one that was intended to be written off as bad- running of the department over a public network ass forteana, nothing for anyone but the black connection, and I couldn't possibly encourage helicopter crowd to pay any attention to, except you to do that when you can bloody well show that it would set you up. I've found some not your face in the office for the meeting we very good email from Bridget inviting McLuhan scheduled the day before yesterday, remember down to headquarters, some pretext to do with a that? software audit. Really fucking stupid stuff that Bob can do the legwork on later. But what I I feel as if my guts have turned to ice. Which really think is happening is, Bridget arranged meeting? I ask. this to make you look bad in support of a power The software audit, remember? You never read play in front of the director's office. the agenda for meetings. If you did, you might Angleton turns to me: Phone head office. Ask have taken an interest in the any other business . for Boris. Tell him to arrest McLuhan. Tell him, . . Where are you calling from, Bob? Anyone SHRINKWRAP. And MARMOSET. I raise an would think you didn't work here . . . eyebrow. Now, lad! I want to talk to Boris. Right now. The Ah, the warm fuzzies of decisive action. I head graunching noise in the background is my jaw for the lamia's desk and pick up the phone and clenching. It's urgent, Harriet. To do with the dial 666; behind me Andy is telling Angleton code blue the other day. Now you can get him something in a low voice. right now or you can regret it later, which is your choice? Switchboard? I ask the sheet of white noise. I want Boris. Now. The Enochian metagrammar Oh, I don't think that'll be necessary, she says in parsers do their thing and the damned souls or what I can only describe as a gloating tone of enchained demons or whatever on switchboard voice. After missing the meeting, you and your hiss louder then connect the circuit. I hear precious Counter-Possession Unit will be another ring tone. Then a familiar voice. divisional history, and you'll have only yourselves to blame! Goodbye. And the bitch Hello, Capital Laundry Services, system support hangs up on me. department. Who are you wanting to talk to? I look round and see both Andy and Angleton Oh shit. Hello, Harriet, I say, struggling to staring at me. She hung up, I say stupidly. sound calm and collected. Getting Bridget's imp Fucking Harriet has a diversion on Boris's line. at this juncture is not a good sign, especially as It's a setup. Something about making an end run she and Boris are renowned for their mutual around the CPU. loathing. This is a red phone call. Is Boris about? Then we shall have to attend this meeting in person, Angleton says, briskly marching toward Oh-ho, Robert! I was wondering where you the front doors, which bend aside to get out of were. Are you trying to pull a sickie again? his way. Follow me! No, I'm not, I say, taking a deep breath. I need to We proceed directly to the helicopter, which has

40 kept its engines idling while we've been inside. McLuhan's got SCORPION STARE, I tell It's only taken, what? Three or four minutes Angleton round the curve of Andy's shoulder. since Angleton arrived? I see another figure And headquarters's security cams are all wired. heading toward us across the car park — a If he primes them before we get back there, we figure in a grey trouser suit, slightly stained, a could find a lockout — or worse. It all depends wild look in her eyes. Hey, you! she shouts. I on what Harriet and her boss have been want some answers! planning. Angleton turns to me. Yours? I nod. He beckons We will just have to see. Angleton nods very to her imperiously. Come with us, he calls, slightly, his facial expression rigid. Do you still raising his voice over the whine of gathering have your lucky charm? turbines. Past her shoulder I see one of the fake Had to use it. I'd shrug, if there was more room. firemen lowering a kit-bag that had been, purely What do you think Bridget's up to? coincidentally, pointed at DI Sullivan's back. This bit I always dislike, he adds in a low I couldn't possibly comment. I'd take Angleton's monotone, his face set in a grim expression of dismissal as a put-down, but he points his chin disapproval. The fewer lives we warp, the at the man in the driver's seat. When we get better. there, Bob, I want you to go in through the warehouse door and wake the caretaker. You I half-consider asking him to explain what he have your mobile telephone? means, but he's already climbing into the rear compartment of the chopper and Andy is Uh, yeah, I say, hoping like hell that the battery following him. I give Josephine a hand up as the hasn't run down. blades overhead begin to turn and the engines Good. Andrew. You and I will enter through the rise in a full-throated bellowing duet. I get my front door. Bob, set your telephone to vibrate. headset on in time to hear Angleton's orders: When you receive a message from me, you will Back to London, and don't spare the horses. know it is time to have the janitor switch off the The Laundry is infamous for its grotesque main electrical power. And the backup power. excesses in the name of accounting; budgetary Oops. I lick my suddenly dry lips, thinking of infractions are punished like war crimes, and all the electrical containment pentacles in the mere missing paper clips can bring the wrath of basement and all the computers plugged into the dead alien gods down on your head. But when filtered and secured circuit on the other floors. Angleton says don't spare the horses he sends All hell's going to break loose if I do that. us screaming across the countryside at a hundred and forty miles per hour, burning That's what I'm counting on. The bastard smiles, aviation fuel by the ton and getting ATC to clear and despite all the horrible sights I've seen today lower priority traffic out of our way — and all so far, I hope most of all that I never see it again because he doesn't want to be late for a meeting. before the day I die. There's a police car waiting for us at the pad, Hey, what about me? Angleton glances at the and we cut through the chaotic London traffic front seat with a momentary flash of irritation. incredibly fast, almost making it into third gear Josephine stares right back, clearly angry and at times. struggling to control it. I'm your liaison officer for North Buckinghamshire, she says, and I'd

41 really like to know who I'm liaising with, Something in her expression tells me I'm on especially as you seem to have left a few bodies dangerous ground here, but I persist: Well, this on my manor that I'm going to have to bury, and is the Laundry. It's our job to deal with seven this jerk — she means me, I am distraught! Oh, shades of vile shit so that people like you don't the ignominy! — promised me you'd have the have to. I take a deep breath. And before we go answers. in I figured I should warn you that you're going to think Fred and Rosemary West work for us, Angleton composes himself. There are no and Harold Shipman's the medical officer. At answers, madam, only further questions, he this point she goes slightly pale — the Demon says, and just for a second he sounds like a DIYers and Doctor Death are the acme of pious wanker of a vicar going through the British serial killerdom after all — but she motions of comforting the bereaved. And if you doesn't flinch. want the answers you'll have to go through the jerk's filing cabinet. Bastard. Then there's a And you're the good guys? flashing sardonic grin, dry as the desert sands in Sometimes I have my doubts, I sigh. June: Do you want to help prevent any, ah, recurrence of what you saw an hour ago? If so, Well, join the club. I have a feeling she's going you may accompany the jerk and attempt to to make it, if she lives through the next hour. keep him from dying. He reaches out a hand and Enough bullshit. This is the street level entrance drops a ragged slip of paper over her shoulder. to the facilities block under Headquarters You'll need this. Building One. You saw what those fuckers did Provisional warrant card, my oh my. Josephine with the cameras at the car pound and Site Able. mutters something unkind about his ancestry, If my guess is straight, they're going to do it all barnyard animals, and lengths of rubber hose. I over again here — or worse. From here there's a pretend not to hear because we're about three secure line to several of the Met's offices, minutes out, stuck behind a slow-moving but including various borough-level control gregarious herd of red double-decker buses, and systems, such as the Camden Town control I'm trying to remember the way to the janitor's centre. SCORPION STARE isn't ready for office in the Laundry main unit basement and nationwide deployment — whether there's anything I'm likely to trip over What the hell would justify that? she demands, in the dark. eyes wide. You do not have clearance for that information. Amazing how easily the phrase trips off the Excuse me for asking, but how many corpses do tongue. Besides, it'd give you nightmares. But you usually run into in the course of your job? I you're the one who mentioned hell, and as I was ask. saying — I stop, with an overflowing dumpster between us and the anonymous doorway — our Too many, since you showed up. We turn the pet lunatic, who killed all those folks at street corner into a brick-walled alley crowded Dillinger Associates and who is now in a by wheelie bins and smelling of vagrant piss. committee meeting upstairs, could conceivably But since you ask, I'm a detective inspector. You upload bits of SCORPION STARE to the get to see lots of vile stuff on the beat.

42 various camera control centres. Which is why Right. And then I'm going to try to figure out we are going to stop him, by bringing down the how to take down the primary switchgear, the intranet backbone cable in and out of the backup substation, the diesel generator, and the Laundry's headquarters. Which would be easy if batteries for the telephone switch and the this was a bog-standard government office, but a protected computer ring main all at the same little harder in reality because the Laundry has time so nobody twigs until it's too late. While guards, and some of those guards are very fending off anyone who tries to stop us. Clear? special, and some of those very special guards As mud. She stares at me. I always wanted to be will try to stop us by eating us alive. on TV, but not quite this way. Eating. Us. Josephine is looking a little glassy. Yeah, well. I glance up the side of the building, Did I tell you that I don't do headhunters? That's which is windowless as far as the third floor Recruitment's job. (and then the windows front onto empty rooms Look, I say gently, have you ever seen Night of three feet deep, just to give the appearance of the Living Dead? It's really not all that different occupation). I'd rather call in an air strike on the — except that I've got permission to be here, power station but there's a hospital two blocks and you've got a temporary warrant card too, so that way and an old folks' home on the other we should be all right. A thought strikes me. side . . . you ready? You're a cop. Have you been through firearms She nods. Okay. And I take a step round the training? wheelie bin and knock on the door. Click-clack. Yes, she says drily. Next question? The door is a featureless blue slab of paint. As Great! If you'd just take that away from my nose soon as I touch it, it swings open — no creaking — that's better — it won't work on the guards. here, did you think this was a Hammer horror Sorry, but they're already, uh, metabolically flick? — to reveal a small, dusty room with a challenged. However, it will work very nicely dry powder fire extinguisher bolted to one wall on the CCTV cameras. Which — and another door opposite. Wait, I say, and take the spray paint can out of my pocket. Okay, Okay, I get the picture. We go in. We stay out of come on in. Keep your warrant note handy. the frame unless we want to die. She makes the pistol vanish inside her jacket and looks at me She jumps when the door closes automatically askance — for the first time since the car pound with a faint hiss, and I swallow to make my ears with something other than irritation or dislike. pop — it only looks like a cheap fire door from Probably wondering why I didn't flinch. the outside. Okay, here's the fun part. I give the (Obvious, really: compared with what's waiting inner door a quick scan with a utility on my for us inside a little intracranial air conditioning palmtop and it comes up blank, so I put my is a relatively painless way to go, and besides, if hand on the grab-bar and pull. This is the she was seriously pissed at me she could have moment of truth; if the shit has truly hit the fan gotten me alone in a nice soundproofed cell already the entire building will be locked down back in her manor with a pair of size twelve tighter than a nuclear bunker, and the boots and their occupants.) We're going to go in thaumaturgic equivalent of a three-phase six- there and you're going to talk our way past the hundred-volt bearer will be running through all zombies while I shoot out all the cameras, right? the barred portals. But I get to keep on

43 breathing, and the door swings open on a dark out of the wall. It's coax cable, just like the corridor leading past shut storeroom doors to a doctor ordered. There's no obvious evidence of dingy wooden staircase. And that's all it is — live SCORPION STARE, but my hands are still there's nothing in here to confuse an accidental clammy and my heart is in my mouth as I burglar who makes it in past the wards in hope realise how close I came to walking in front of of finding some office supplies to filch. All the it. How small can they make CCTV cameras, really classified stuff is either ten storeys anyway? I keep seeing smaller and smaller ones underground or on the other side of the cellar . . . walls. Twitching in the darkness. Better move fast, she comments. I don't see any zombies, Josephine says edgily, Why? crowding up behind me in the gloom. Because you've just told them you're coming. That's because they're — I freeze and bring up the dry powder extinguisher. Have you got a Oh. Okay. We climb the staircase in bursts, pocket mirror? I ask, trying to sound casual. stopping before the next landing to check for more basilisk bugs. Josephine spots one, and so Hold on. I hear a dry click, and then she passes do I — I tag them with the mostly empty can of me something like a toothbrush fucking a paint, then she blasts their lenses from behind contact lens. Will this do? and underneath, trying not to breathe the fumes Oh wow, I didn't know you were a dentist. It's in before we move past them. There's an on a goddamn telescoping wand almost half a unnaturally creaky floorboard, too, just for metre long. I lean forward and gingerly stretch yucks. But we make it to the ground floor the angled mirror so I can view the stairwell. landing alive, and I just have time to realise how badly we've fucked up when the lights come up It's for checking the undersides of cars for and the night watchmen come out from either bombs — or cut brake pipes. You never know side. what the little fuckers in the school playground will do while you're talking to the headmistress. Ah, Bob! Decided to visit the office for once, have we? Gulp. Well, I guess this is a suitable alternative use. It's Harriet, looking slightly demented in a black pin-striped suit and clutching a glass of what I don't see any cameras up there so I retract the looks like fizzy white wine. mirror and I'm about to set foot on the stairs when she says, You missed one. Where the fuck is everyone else? I demand, looking round. At this time of day the place Huh . . . ? should be heaving with office bodies. But all I She points. It's about waist level, the size of a see here is Harriet — and three or four silently doorknob, embedded in the dark wooden leaning night watchmen in their grey ministry wainscoting, and it's pointing up the stairs. Shit, suits and hangdog expressions, luminous worms you're right. And there's something odd about it. of light glowing in their eyes. I slide the mirror closer for an oblique look and I do believe we called the monthly fire drill a dry-swallow. There are two lenses. Oh, tricky. few hours ahead of schedule. Harriet smirks. I pull out my multitool and begin digging them Then we locked the doors. It's quite simple, you

44 know. will never do. She snaps her fingers. Take the woman, detain the man. Fred from Accounting lurches sideways and peers at me over her shoulder. He's been dead Stop — I begin. The zombies step forward, for months: normally I'd say this was something lurching jerkily, and then all hell breaks loose of an improvement, but right now he's drooling about twenty centimetres from my right ear. like it's past his teatime and I'm on the canteen Zombies make excellent night watchmen and it menu. takes a lot to knock one down, but they're not bulletproof, and Josephine unloads her Who's that? asks Josephine. magazine two rounds at a time. I'm dazzled by Who? Oh, one of them's a shambling undead the flash and my head feels as if someone is bureaucrat and the other one used to work in whacking me on the ear with a shovel — bits of accounts before he had a little accident with a meat and unspeakable ripped stuff go flying, but summoning. I bare my teeth at Harriet. The precious little blood, and they keep coming. game's up. When you've quite finished, Harriet hisses, and I don't think so. She's just standing there, snaps her fingers at Josephine: the zombies looking supercillious and slightly triumphant pause for a moment then close in, as their behind her bodyguard of zombies. Actually the mistress backs toward the staircase up to the boot is on the other foot. You're late and you're first floor. out of a job, Robert. The Counter-Possession Quick, down the back corridor there! I gasp, Unit is being liquidated — that old fossil pointing to my left. Angleton isn't needed anymore, once we get the benefits of panopticon surveillance combined The — what? with look-to-kill technology and rolled out on a Quick! departmental basis. In fact, you're just in time to clear your desk. She grins, horribly. Stupid little I dash along the corridor, tugging Josephine's boy, I'm sure they can find a use for you below arm until I feel her running with me. I pull my stairs. warrant card and yell, Open sesame! ahead and doors slam open to either side — including the You've been talking to our friend Mr McLuhan, broom closets and ductwork access points. In haven't you? I ask desperately, trying to keep here! I dive in to one side and Josephine piles in her talking — I really don't want the night after me and I yank at the door — Close, damn watchmen to carry me away. Is he upstairs? you, fuck, close sesame! and it slams shut with If so, you probably need to know that I intend to the hardscrabble of bony fingertips on the arrest him. Twelve counts of murder and outside. attempted murder, in case you were wondering. Got a light? I ask. I almost look round, but manage to resist the urge: Josephine's voice is brittle but controlled. Naah, I don't smoke. But I've got a torch Police. somewhere — Wrong jurisdiction, dear, Harriet says The scrabbling's getting louder. I don't want to consolingly. And I do believe our idiot tearaway hurry you or anything, but — And lo, there is here has got you on the wrong message. That light.

45 We're standing at the bottom of a shallow shaft Ah, Bob! He sounds positively avuncular. with cable runs vanishing above us into the Where are you? Did you manage to shut down gloom. Josephine looks frantic. They didn't the Internet? drop! I shot them and they didn't drop! I don't have time to correct him. Besides, Don't sweat it, they're run by remote control. Josephine is reloading her cannon and I think Maybe now is not the time to explain about six- she's going to try a really horrible pun if I don't node summoning points, the Vohlman exercise, produce a solution PDQ. Boss, run McLuhan's and the minutiae of raising and binding the SCORPION STARE tool and upload the dead: they're knocking on the door and they firmware to all the motion-tracking cameras on want in. But look, here's something even more the ground floor east wing loop right now. interesting. Hey, I see CAT-5 cabling. Pass me What? I'm not sure I heard you correctly. your torch? I take a deep breath. She's subverted the night This isn't the time to go all geeky on me, nerd- watchmen. Everybody else is out of the boy. Or are you looking for roaches? building. Do it now or I'm switching to a diet of Just fucking do it, I'll explain later, okay? fresh brains. Harriet really got to me; it's been a long day and If you say so, he agrees, with the manner of an I told myself ages ago that if I ever heard indulgent uncle talking to a tearaway schoolboy, another fucking lecture about timekeeping from then hangs up. her I'd go postal. There's a splintering crash and a hand rams Bingo. It is CAT-5, and there's an even more through the door right between us and embeds interesting cable running off to one side that itself in the wall opposite. Oh shit, I have time looks like a DS-3. I whip out my multitool and to say as the hand withdraws. Then a bolt of begin working on the junction box. The lightning goes off about two feet outside the scrabbling's become insistent by the time I've door, roughly simultaneous with a sizzling crash uncovered the wires, but what the fuck. Who and a wave of heat. We cower in the back of the was it who said, When they think you're cupboard, terrified of fire, until after what seems technical, go crude? I grab a handful of network like an eternity the sprinklers come on. cables and yank, hard. Then I grab another handful. Then, having disconnected the main Is it safe yet? she asks — at least I think that's trunk line — mission accomplished — I take what she says, my ears are still ringing. another moment to think. One way to find out. I take the broken casing Bob, have you got a plan? from the network junction box and chuck it through the hole in the door. When it doesn't I'm thinking. explode I gingerly push the door open. The Then think faster, they're about to come through ringing is louder; it's my phone. I pull it wearily the door — out of my pocket and hunch over it to keep it dry, leaning against the wall of the corridor to Which is when I remember my mobile phone stay as far away from the blackened zombie and decide to make a last-ditch attempt. I speed- corpses as I can. Who's there? dial Bridget's office extension — and Angleton picks up after two rings. Bastard. Your manager. He sounds merely amused this

46 time. What a sorry shower you are! Come on up got lots of questions, I manage to say. Try to to Mahogany Row and dry off, both of you — save them for later. I'll tell you everything I the director has a personal bathroom, I think know and you're cleared for, once I've had time you've earned it. to phone my fiancée. Uh. Harriet? Bridget? McLuhan? I've got a husband and a nine year old son, did you think of that before you dragged me into Taken care of, he says complacently, and I this insane nightmare? Sorry. I know you didn't shiver convulsively as the water reaches gelid mean to. It's just that shooting up zombies and tentacles down my spine and tickles my balls being zapped by basilisks makes me a little like a drowned lover. upset. Nerves. Okay. We'll be right up. I glance back at the I know. Just try not to wave them in front of smashed-in utility cupboard and Josephine Angleton, okay? smiles at me like a frightened feral rat, all sharp teeth and savagery and shining .38 automatic. Who is Angleton, anyway? Who does he think We're safe now, I say, as reassuringly as he is? possible. I think we won . . . I pause before the office door. If I knew that, I'm not sure I'd be allowed to tell you. I knock three times. The journey to Angleton's lair takes us up and Enter. Andy opens the door for us. Angleton is along — he normally works out of a gloomy sitting in the director's chair, playing with basement on the other side of the hollowed-out something in the middle of the huge expanse of block of prime London real estate that is oak desk that looks as if it dates to the 1930s. occupied by the Laundry, but this time he's (There's a map on the wall behind him, and a ensconced in the director's suite on the quarter of it is pink.) Ah, Mister Howard, abandoned top floor of the north wing. Detective Inspector. So good of you to come. The north wing is still dry. Over there, people I peer closer. Clack. Clack. Clack. A Newton's are still at work, oblivious to the charred cradle; how 1970s. zombies lying on the scorched, soaked, You could say that. He smiles thinly. The balls thaumaturgically saturated wing next door. We bouncing back and forth between the arms of catch a few odd stares — myself, soaked and the executive toy aren't chromed, rather they battered in my outdoors gear, DI Sullivan in the appear to be textured: pale brown on one side, wreckage of an expensive grey suit, oversized dark or blonde and furry on the other. And handgun clenched in a death grip at her side — bumpy, disturbingly bumpy . . . but wisely or otherwise, nobody asks me to fix the Internet or demands to know why we're I take a deep breath. Harriet was waiting for us. tracking muddy water through Human Said we were too late and the Counter- Resources. Possession Unit was being disbanded. By the time we reach the thick green carpet and Clack. Clack. dusty quietude of the director's suite Josephine's Yes, she would say that, wouldn't she. eyes are wide but she's stopped shaking. You've

47 Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Finally I can't stand desk: PRIVATE SECRETARY. Keeper of the it anymore. Well? I demand. secrets. Whose secrets? A fellow I used to know, his name was Ulyanov, Matrix management, I finally say, the lightbulb once said something rather profound Angleton coming on above my head at last. The Laundry looks like the cat that's swallowed the canary — runs on matrix management. She saw you on the and the feet are sticking out of the side of his org chart as head of the Counter-Possession mouth; he wants me to know this, whatever it is. Unit, not as private secretary to . . . So that's Let your enemies sell you enough rope to hang how come he's got the free run of the director's them with. office! Uh, wasn't that Lenin? I ask. Josephine is aghast. You call this a government department? A flicker of mild irritation crosses his face. This was before he took that name, he says quietly. Worse things happen in parliament every day of Clack. Clack. Clack. He flicks the balls to set the year, my dear. Now that the proximate threat them banging again and I suddenly realise what is over, Angleton looks remarkably they are and feel quite sick. No indeed, Bridget imperturbable; right now I doubt he'd turn her and Harriet — and Bridget's predecessor, and into a frog even if she started yelling at him. the mysterious Mr McLuhan — won't be Besides, you are aware of the maxim that power troubling me again. (Except in my nightmares corrupts and absolute power corrupts about this office, visions of my own shrunken absolutely? Here we deal every day of the week head winding up in one of the director's with power sufficient to destroy your mind. executive toys, skull clattering away eternally in Even worse, we cannot submit to public a scream that nobody can hear anymore . . . ) oversight — it's far too dangerous, like giving Bridget's been plotting a boardroom coup for a atomic weapons to three-year-olds. Ask Robert long time, Robert. Probably since before you to tell you what he did to attract our attention joined the Laundry — or were conscripted. He later, if you like. I'm still dripping and cold, but spares Josephine a long, appraising look. She I can feel my ears flush. suborned Harriet, bribed McLuhan, installed her He focusses on her some more. We can own corrupt geas on Voss. Partners in crime, reinforce the geas and release you, he adds intending to expose me as an incompetent and a quietly. But I think you can do a much more possible security leak before the Board of important job here. The choice is yours. Auditors, I suppose — that's usually how they plan it. I guessed this was going on, but I I snort under my breath. She glances at me, eyes needed firm evidence. You supplied it. narrowed and cynical. If this is what passes for Unfortunately, Bridget was none too stable; a field investigation in your department, you when she realised that I knew, she ordered Voss need me. to remove the witnesses then summoned Yes, well, you don't need to make your mind up McLuhan and proceeded with her palace coup immediately. Detached duty, and all that. As for d'état. Equally unfortunately for her, she failed you, Bob, he says, with heavy emphasis on my to correctly establish who my line manager was name, you have acquitted yourself satisfactorily before she attempted to go over my head to have again. Now go and have a bath before you rot me removed. He taps the sign on the front of the

48 the carpet. Bathroom's two doors down the hall on the left, Andy adds helpfully from his station against the wall, next to the door: there's no doubt right now as to who's in charge here. But what happens now? I ask, bewildered and a bit shocky and already fighting off the yawns that come on when people stop trying to kill me. I mean, what's really happened? Angleton grins like a skull: Bridget forfeited her department, so the directors have asked me to put Andrew in acting charge of it for the time being. Boris slipped up and failed to notice McLuhan; he is, ah, temporarily indisposed. And as for you, a job well done wins its natural reward — another job. His grin widens. As I believe the youth of today say, don't have a cow . . .

49 Down on the Farm with defending the realm from the scum of the multiverse, using the tools of applied Charles Stross computational demonology: volunteer for the illustration by craig phillips wrong job and you can end up with soul- sucking horrors from beyond spacetime using Ah, the joy of summer: here in the south-east of your brain for a midnight snack. But I don’t England it’s the season of mosquitoes, sunburn, think I could get away with feigning overwork and water shortages. I’m a city boy, so you can right now, and besides: he’s packaged it up as a add stifling pollution to the list as a million mystery. Andy knows how to bait my hook, outwardly mobile families start their Chelsea damn it. tractors and race to their holiday camps. And that’s before we consider the hellish environs of “What kind of job?” the Tube (far more literally hellish than anyone “There’s something odd going on down at the realizes, unless they’ve looked at a Transport for Funny Farm.” He gives a weird little chuckle. London journey planner and recognized the “The trouble is going to be telling whether it’s recondite geometry underlying the just the usual, or a more serious deviation. superimposed sigils of the underground map). Normally I’d ask Boris to check it out but he’s But I digress... not available this month. It has to be an SSO 2 or higher, and I can’t go out there myself. One morning, my deputy head of department So...how about it?” wanders into my office. It’s a cramped office, and I’m busy practicing my Frisbee throw with Call me impetuous (not to mention a little a stack of beer mats and a dart-board decorated bored) but I’m not stupid. And while I’m far with various cabinet ministers. “Bob,” Andy enough down the management ladder that I have pauses to pluck a moist cardboard square out of to squint to see daylight, I’m an SSO 3, which the air as I sit up, guiltily: “a job’s just come up means I can sign off on petty cash that you might like to look at—I think it’s right authorizations up to the price of a pencil and get up your street.” to sit in on interminable meetings, when I’m not tackling supernatural incursions or grappling The first law of Bureaucracy is, show no with the eerie, eldritch horrors in Human curiosity outside your cubicle. It’s like the first Resources. I even get to represent my rule of every army that’s ever bashed a square: department on international liaison junkets, never volunteer. when I don’t dodge fast enough. “Not so quick If you ask questions (or volunteer) it will be —why can’t you go? Have you got a meeting taken as a sign of inactivity, and the devil, in the scheduled, or something?” Most likely it’s a five person of your line manager (or your sergeant) course lunch with his opposite number from the will find a task for your idle hands. What’s Dustbin liaison committee, knowing Andy, but more, you’d better believe it’ll be less appealing if so, and if I take the job, that’s all for the good: than whatever you were doing before (creatively he’ll end up owing me. idling, for instance), because inactivity is a Andy pulls a face. “It’s not the usual. I would crime against organization and must be go, but they might not let me out again.” punished. It goes double here in the Laundry, that branch of the British secret state tasked Huh? “‘They’? Who are ‘they’?”

50 “The Nurses.” He looks me up and down as if prone: they’re more like the mythical Worse he’s never seen me before. Weird. What’s gotten Things that happen at Sea (especially in the into him? “They’re sensitive to the stench of vicinity of drowned alien cities occupied by magic. It’s okay for you, you’ve only been tentacled terrors). When one of our number working here, what? Six years? All you need to needs psychiatric care, they’re not going to get do is turn your pockets inside out before you go, it in a normal hospital, or via care in the and make sure you’re not carrying any gizmos, community: we don’t want agents babbling electronic or otherwise. But I’ve been here classified secrets in public, even in the relatively coming up on fifteen years. And the longer safe confines of a padded cell. Perforce, we take you’ve been in the Laundry...it gets under your care of our own. skin. Visiting the Funny Farm isn’t a job for an I’m not going to tell you what town the Funny old hand, Bob. It has to be someone new and Farm is embedded in. Like many of our fresh, who isn’t likely to attract their establishments it’s a building of a certain age, professional attention.” confiscated by the government during the Call me slow, but finally I figure out what this is Second World War and not returned to its about. Andy wants me to go because he’s afraid. former owners. It’s hard to find; it sits in the middle of a triangle of grubby shopping streets (See, I told you the rules, didn’t I?) that have seen better days, and every building that backs onto it sports a high, windowless, * * * brick wall. All but one: if you enter a small grocery store, walk through the stock room into the back yard, then unlatch a nondescript Anyway, that’s why, less than a week later, I am wooden gate and walk down a gloomy, soot- admitted to a Lunatickal Asylum—for that is stained alley, you’ll find a dank alleyway. You what the gothic engraving on the stone Victorian won’t do this without authorization—it’s workhouse lintel assures me it is. Luckily mine protected by wards powerful enough to cause is not an emergency admission: but you can projectile vomiting in would-be burglars—but if never be too sure... you did, and if you followed the alley, you’d come to a heavy green wooden door surrounded

by narrow windows with black-painted cast-iron * * * bars. A dull, pitted plaque next to the doorbell proclaims it to be St Hilda of Grantham’s Home

For Disgruntled Waifs And Strays. (Except that The old saw that there are some things that most of them aren’t so much disgruntled as mortal men were not meant to know cuts deep demonically possessed when they arrive at these in my line of work. Laundry staff—the Laundry gates.) is what we call the organization, not a It smells faintly of boiled cabbage and description of what it does—are sometimes existential despair. I take a deep breath and yank exposed to mind-blasting horrors in the course the bell-pull. of our business. I’m not just talking about the usual PowerPoint presentations and self- Nothing happens, of course. I phoned ahead to assessment sessions to which any bureaucracy is make an appointment, but even so, someone’s

51 got to unlock a bunch of doors and then lock professional implements, fetishes, or charms?” I them again before they can get to the entrance shake my head. “Good. If you’d like to come and let me in. “They take security seriously this way, please?” there,” Andy told me—“can’t risk some of the Renfield is a mild-looking woman, slightly battier inmates getting loose, you know.” mousy in a tweed skirt and white lab coat, with “Just how dangerous are they?” I’d asked. the perpetually harried expression of someone who has a full Filofax and hasn’t worked out yet “Mostly they’re harmless—to other people.” He that her watch is losing an hour a day. I hurry shuddered. “But the secure ward—don’t try and along behind her, trying to guess her age. Thirty go there on your own. Not that the Sisters will five? Forty five? I give up. “How many inmates let you, but I mean, don’t even think about do you have, exactly?” I ask. trying it. Some of them are...well, we owe them a duty of care and a debt of honour, they fell in We come to a portcullis-like door and she the line of duty and all that, but that’s scant pauses, fumbling with an implausibly large key consolation for you if a senior operations officer ring. “Eighteen, at last count,” she says. “Come who’s succumbed to paranoid schizophrenia on, we don’t want to annoy Matron. She doesn’t decides that you’re a BLUE HADES and gets like people obstructing the corridors.” There are hold of some red chalk and a hypodermic needle steel rails recessed into the floor, like a before your next visit, hmm?” diminutive narrow-gauge railway. The corridor walls are painted institutional cream, and I The thing is, magic is a branch of applied notice after a moment that the light is coming mathematics, and the inmates here are not only through windows set high up in the walls: odd- mad: they’re computer science graduates. That’s looking devices like armoured-glass chandeliers why they came to the attention of the Laundry hang from pipes, just out of reach. “Gas lamps,” in the first place, and it’s also why they Renfield says abruptly. I twitch. She’s noticed ultimately ended up in the Farm, where we can my surreptitious inspection. “We can’t use keep them away from sharp pointy things and electric ones, except for Matron, of course. diagrams with the wrong sort of angles. But it’s Come into my office, I’ll fill you in.” difficult to make sure they’re safe. You can solve theorems with a blackboard if you have to, We go through another door—oak, darkened after all, or in your head, if you dare. Green with age, looking more like it belongs in a crayon on the walls of a padded cell takes on a stately home than a Lunatick Asylum, except for whole different level of menace in the Funny the two prominent locks—and suddenly we’re Farm: in fact, many of the inmates aren’t in mahogany row: thick wool carpets, brass allowed writing implements, and blank paper is door-knobs, light switches, and over-stuffed carefully controlled—never mind electronic armchairs. (Okay, so the carpet is faded with devices of any kind. age and transected by more of the parallel rails. But it’s still Officer Country.) Renfield’s office I’m mulling over these grim thoughts when opens off one side of this reception area, and at there’s a loud clunk from the door, and a panel the other end I see closed doors and a staircase just large enough to admit one person opens leading up to another floor. “This is the inward. “Mr Howard? I’m Dr. Renfield. You’re administrative wing,” she explains as she opens not carrying any electronic or electrical items or her door. “Tea or coffee?”

52 “Coffee, thanks,” I say, sinking into a leather- in pointed distaste. encrusted armchair that probably dates to the “Nurse Gearbox is one of our eight Sisters,” last but one century. Renfield nods and pulls a explains Dr Renfield. “They’re not fully discreet cord by the door frame, then drags her autonomous“—I can see a rope-thick bundle of office chair out from behind her desk. I can’t cables trailing from under the hem of the help noticing that not only does she not have a Sister’s floor-length skirt, which presumably computer, but her desk is dominated by a huge conceals something other than legs—“but and ancient manual typewriter—an Imperial controlled by Matron, who lives in the two sub- Aristocrat ‘66’ with the wide carriage upgrade basement levels under the administration block. and adjustable tabulator, I guess, although I’m Matron started life as an IBM 1602 mainframe, not really an expert on office appliances that are back in the day, with a summoning pentacle and twice as old as I am—and one wall is covered in a trapped class four lesser nameless wooden filing cabinets. There might be as much manifestation constrained to provide the higher as thirty megabytes of data stored in them. “You cognitive functions.” do everything on paper, I understand?” I twitch. “It’s a grid, please, not a pentacle. Um. “That’s right.” She nods, serious-faced. “Too Matron is electrically powered?” many of our clients aren’t safe around modern electronics. We even have to be careful what “Yes, Mr. Howard: we allow electrical games we let them play—Lego and Meccano equipment in Matron’s basement as well as here are completely banned, obviously, and there was in the staff suite. Only the areas accessible to the a nasty incident involving a game of Cluedo, patients have to be kept power-free. The Sisters back before my time: any board game that has a are fully equipped to control unseemly non-deterministic set of rules can be dangerous outbursts, pacify the over-stimulated, and in the wrong set of hands.” conduct basic patient care tasks. They also have Vohlman-Flesch Thaumaturgic Thixometers for The door opens. “Tea for two,” says Renfield. I detecting when patients are in danger of doing look round, expecting an orderly, and freeze. themselves a mischief, so I would caution you “Mr Howard, this is Nurse Gearbox,” she adds. to keep any occult activities to a minimum in “Nurse Gearbox, this is Mr Howard. He is not a their presence—despite their hydraulic delay new admission,” she says hastily, as the thing in line controls, their reflexes are very fast.” the doorway swivels its head towards me with a menacing hiss of hydraulics. Gulp. I nod appreciatively. “When was the system built?” Whirr-clunk. “Miss-TER How-ARD. Wel- COME to“—ching—“Sunt-HIL-dah’s“—hiss- The set of Dr. Renfield’s jaw tells me that she’s clank. The thing in the very old-fashioned bored with the subject, or doesn’t want to go nurse’s uniform—old enough that its origins as there for some reason. “That will be all, Sister.” a nineteenth-century nun’s habit are clear— The door closes, as if on oiled hinges. She waits regards me with unblinking panopticon lenses. for a moment, head cocked as if listening for Where its nose should be, something like a something, then she relaxes. The change is witch-finder’s wand points towards me, stellate remarkable: from stressed-out psychiatrist to and articulated: its face is a brass death mask, tired housewife in zero seconds flat. She smiles mouth a metal grille that seems to grimace at me tiredly. “Sorry about that. There are some things

53 you really shouldn’t talk about in front of the forcibly detain anyone who wasn’t at risk for Sisters: among other things, Matron is very nearly thirty years now.” The door opens again, touchy about how long she’s been here, and without warning. This time, Sister is pushing a everything they hear, she hears.” trolley, complete with teapot, jug, and two cups and saucers. The trolley wheels fit perfectly on “Oh, right.” I feel like kicking myself. the narrow-gauge track, and the way Nurse “Did Mr. Newstrom brief you about this Gearbox shunts it along makes me think wheels. installation before he pitched you in at the deep “Thank you, Sister, that will be all,” Renfield end?” says, taking the trolley. Just when I thought I had a handle on her...“Not “So what clients do you have at present?” I ask. in depth.” (Let’s not mention the six sheet letter “We have eighteen,” she says, without missing a of complaint alleging staff brutality, scribbled in beat. “Milk or sugar?” blue crayon on both sides of the toilet paper. Let’s not go into the fact that nobody has a clue “Milk, no sugar. Nobody at head office seems how it was smuggled out, much less how it able to tell me much about them.” appeared on the table one morning in the “I don’t see why not—we file regular updates executive boardroom, which is always locked with Human Resources,” she says, pouring the overnight.) “I gather it’s pretty normal to fob tea. inspections off on a junior manager.” (Let’s not mention just how junior.) “Is that a problem?” I consider my next words carefully: no need to mention the confusing incident with the “Humph.” Renfield sniffs. “You could say so. shredder, the medical files, and the photocopies It’s a matter of necessity, really. Too much of Peter-Fred’s buttocks at last year’s Christmas exposure to esoterica in the course of duty party. (Never mind the complaint, which isn’t leaves the most experienced operatives carrying worth the toilet paper it was scribbled on except traces of, hmm, disruptive influences.” She insofar as it proves that the Funny Farm’s considers her next words carefully. “You know cordon sanitaire is leaking. One of the great what our purpose is, don’t you? Our job is to things about ISO9000 compliant organizations isolate and care for members of staff who are a is that not only is there a form for everything, danger to themselves and others. That’s why but anything that isn’t submitted on the correct such a small facility—we only have thirty beds form can be ignored.) “It’s the paper thing, —has two doctors on staff: it takes two to sign apparently. Manual typewriters don’t work well the committal papers. Matron and the Sisters are with the office document management system, immune to cross-infection and possession, but and someone tried to feed them to a scanner a have no legal standing, so Dr. Hexenhammer couple of years ago. Then they sent the originals and I are needed.” for recycling without proof-reading the scanner “Right.” I nod, trying to conceal my unease. “So output. Anyway, it turns out that we don’t have the Sisters have a tendency to react badly to a completely accurate idea of who’s on long- senior field agents?” term remand here, and HR want their superannuation files bringing up to date, as a “Occasionally.” Her cheek twitches. “Although matter of some urgency.” they haven’t made a mistake and tried to

54 Renfield sighs. “So someone had an accident full-time Sister’s attention just to keep them with a shredder again. And no photocopies?” under control!” She looks at me sharply for a moment: “Well, I “Of course,” I shrug, trying to look embarrassed suppose that’s just typical. We’re just another of (it’s not hard): “but HR have got a bee in their those low-priority outposts nobody gives a bonnet about some European Directive on damn about. I suppose I should be grateful they workplace health and safety and long-term sent someone to look into it...” She takes a sip disability resource provisioning that requires of tea. “We’ve got fourteen short-stay patients them to appoint a patient advocate to mediate right now, Mr Howard. Of those, I think the with the ombudsman in disputes over health and prognosis is good in all cases, except perhaps safety conditions”—I shrug again. “It’s bullshit. Merriweather...if you give me your desk number You know it and I know it. But we’ve got to I’ll post you a full list of names and payroll comply, or Questions will be Asked. This is the references tomorrow. The four long term civil service, after all. And they’re still patients are another matter. They live in the technically Laundry employees, even if they’ve secure wing, by the way. All of them have a been remanded into long-term care, so someone nurse of their own, just in case. Three of them has to do the job. My managers played spin-the- have been here so long that they don’t have bottle and I got the job, so I’ve got to ask you. If current payroll numbers—the system was first you don’t mind?” computerized in 1972, and they’d all been permanently decertified for duty before that “If you insist, I’m sure something can be point—and one of them, between you and me, arranged,” Renfield concedes. “But Matron I’m not even sure what his name is.” won’t be happy about you visiting the secure wing. It’s very irregular—she likes to keep a I nod, trying to look encouraging. The firm grip on it. It’ll take a while to sort a visit complaint I’m supposed to investigate out, and if any of them get wind...” apparently came from one of the long-term patients. The question is, which one? Nobody’s “Well, then, we’d just better make it a surprise, sure: the doorman on the night shift when the and the sooner we get it over with, the sooner document showed up isn’t terribly I’ll be out of your hair!” I grin like a loon. communicative (he’s been dead for some years “They told me about the observation gallery. himself), and the CCTV system didn’t spot Would you mind showing me around?" anything. Which is in itself suggestive—the Laundry’s HQ CCTV surveillance is rather special, extremely hard to deceive, and * * * guaranteed not to be hooked up to the SCORPION STARE network any more, which We do the short-stay ward first. The ward is would be the most obvious route to suborning it. arranged around a corridor, with bathrooms and “Perhaps you could introduce me to the a nursing station at either end, and individual inmates? The transients first, then the long-term rooms for the patients. There’s a smoking room ones?” off to one side, with a yellow patina to the white She looks a little shocked. “But they’re the long gloss paint around the door frame. The smoking term residents! I assure you, they each need a room is empty but for a huddle of sad-looking

55 leather armchairs and an imposing wall-board past me: “auditor! Auditor!” covered in health and safety notices (including “Henry?” Renfield steps sideways around me. the obligatory “Smoking is Illegal” warning). If She sounds concerned. “Is this a bad time? Is it wasn’t for the locks and the observation there anything I can do to help?” windows in the doors, it could be mistaken for the day room of a genteel, slightly decaying “You—you—” His wobbly index finger points Victorian railway hotel, fallen on hard times. past me, twitching randomly. “Inspection! Inspection!” The patients are another matter. Renfield obviously used the wrong word and set “This is Henry Merriweather,” says Dr Renfield, him off. The poor bastard’s terrified, half out of opening the door to Bed Three. “Henry? Hello? his tree with fear. My stomach just about climbs I want you to meet Mr Howard. He’s here to out through my ribs in sympathy: the auditors conduct a routine inspection. Hello? Henry?” are one of my personal nightmares, and Henry Bed Three is actually a cramped studio flat, (that’s Senior Scientific Officer Third, Henry featuring a small living room with sofa and Merriweather, Operations Research and table, and separate bedroom and toilet areas Development Group) may be half-catatonic and opening off it opposite the door. A wind-up a danger to himself, but he’s got every right to gramophone with a flaring bell-shaped horn sits be afraid of them. “It’s all right, I’m not”— atop a hulking wooden sideboard, stained There’s a squeaking grinding noise behind me. almost black. There’s a newspaper, neatly Whirr-Clunk. “Miss-TER MerriWEATHER. folded, and a bowl of fruit. The frosted window GO to your ROOM.” Click. “Time for BED. glass is threaded with wire, but otherwise IMM-ediateLY.” Click-clunk. Behind me, Nurse there’s little to dispel the illusion of hospitality, Flywheel is blocking the door like a starched except for the occupant. and pintucked Dalek: she brandishes a cast-iron Henry squats, cross-legged, on top of the sink plunger menacingly. “IMM-ediateLY!” polished wooden table. His head is tilted in my “Override!” barks Renfield. “Sister! Back direction, but he’s not focusing on me. He’s away!” To me, quietly: “the Sisters respond dressed in a set of pastel-striped pyjamas the badly when inmates get upset. Follow my lead.” like of which I haven’t seen this century. His To the Sister, who is casting about with her attention is focused on the Sister waiting in the stalk-like Thaumic Thixometer: “I have corridor behind us. His face is a rictus of abject control!” terror, as if the automaton in the starched pinafore is waiting to pull his fingers to pieces, Merriweather stands in the corner, shaking joint by joint, as soon as we leave. uncontrollably and panting as the robotic nurse points at him for a minute. We’re at an impasse, “Hello?” I say tentatively, and wave a hand in it seems. Then: “DocTOR—Matron says the front of him. patIENT must go to bed. You have CON-trol.” Henry jack-knifes to his feet and tumbles off the Clunk-whirr. The sister withdraws, rotates on table backwards, making a weird gobbling noise her base, and glides backward along her rails to that I mistake at first for laughter. He backs into the nursing station. the corner of the room, crouching, and points Renfield nudges the door shut with one foot.

56 “Mr Howard, would you mind standing with organization who could get away with your back to the door? And your head in front of misappropriating the name of the CIA’s that, ah, spy-hole?” legendary chief of counter-espionage as a nom de guerre. I don’t know anyone else in the “You’re not, not, nuh-huh—” Merriweather organization whose face is visible in circa-1942 gobbles for words as he stares at me. photographs of the Laundry’s line-up, either, I spread my hands. “Not an auditor,” I say, barely changed across all those years. Angleton smiling. scares the bejeezus out of most people, myself “Not an—an—” His mouth falls open and his included. Study the abyss for long enough and eyes shut. A moment later, I see the moisture the abyss will study you right back; Angleton’s trails on his cheeks as he begins to weep with qualified to chair a university department of quiet desperation. necromancy—if any such existed—and meetings with him can be quite harrowing. “He’s having a bad day,” Renfield mutters in my Luckily the old ghoul seems to like me, or at direction. “Here, let’s get you to bed, Henry.” least not to view me with the distaste and She approaches him slowly, but he makes no disdain he reserves for Human Resources or our move to resist as she steers him into the small political masters. In the wizened, desiccated bedroom and pulls the covers back. corners of what passes for his pedagogical soul I stand with my back to the door the whole time, he evidently longs for a student, and I’m the covering the observation window. For some nearest thing he’s got right now. reason, the back of my neck is itching. I can’t Knock, knock. help thinking that Nurse Flywheel isn’t exactly the chatty talkative type who’s likely to put her “Enter.” feet up and relax with a nice cup of tea. I’ve got “Boss? Got a minute?” a feeling that somewhere in this building, an “Sit, boy.” I sat. Angleton bashed away at the unblinking red-rimmed eye is watching me, and keyboard of his device for a few more seconds, sooner or later I’m going to have to meet its then pulled the carbon papers out from under owner. the platen—for really secret secrets in this line of work, computers are flat-out verboten—and * * * laid them face-down on his desk, then carefully draped a stained tea-towel over them. “What is it?” Andy was afraid. “Andy wants me to go and conduct an Well, I’m not stupid; I can take a hint. So right unscheduled inspection of the Funny Farm.” after he asked me to go down to St Hilda’s and Whoa. Angleton stares at me, fully engaged. find out what the hell was going on, I plucked “Did he say why?” he asks, finally. up my courage and went and knocked on Angleton’s office door. “Well.” How to put it? “He seems to be afraid of something. And there’s some kind of complaint. Angleton is not to be trifled with. I don’t know From one of the inmates.” anyone else currently alive and in the Angleton props his elbows on the desk and

57 makes a steeple of his bony fingers. A minute “Isn’t it supposed to be leak-proof, by passes before a cold wind blows across the definition?” charnel house roof: “well.” “I’m getting to that. Be patient, Bob.” There’s a I have never seen Angleton nonplussed before. waspish note in his voice and I shut up hastily. The effect is disturbing, like glancing down and A minute later, Angleton pulls a mimeographed realizing that, like Wile E. Coyote, you’ve just booklet from the file and closes the lid. He run over the edge of a cliff and are standing on returns to the desk, and slides the booklet thin air. “Boss?” towards me. “What exactly did Andy say?” Angleton asks “I think you’d better read this first, then go and slowly. do what Andy wants,” he says slowly. “Be a “We received a complaint.” I briefly outline good boy and copy me on your detailed what I know about the shit-stirring missive. itinerary before you depart.” “Something about one of the long-stay inmates. I read the cover of the booklet, which is dog- And I was just wondering, do you know eared and dusty. There’s a picture of a swell guy anything about them?” in a suit and a gal in a fifties beehive hairdo Angleton peers at me over the rims of his sitting in front of a piece of industrial bifocals. “As a matter of fact I do,” he says archaeology. The title reads: POWER, slowly. “I had the privilege of working with COOLING, AND SUBSTATION them. Hmm. Let me see.” He unfolds creakily to REQUIREMENTS FOR YOUR IBM S/1602- his feet, turns, and strides over to the shelves of M200. I sneeze, puzzled. “Boss?” ancient Eastlight files that cover the back wall “I suggest you read and memorize this booklet, of his office. “Where did I put it...” Bob. It is not impossible that there will be an Angleton going to the paper files is another exam and you really wouldn’t want to fail it.” whoa! moment. He keeps most of his stuff in his My skin crawls. “Boss?” Memex, the vast, hulking microfilm mechanism built into his desk. If it’s still printed on paper Pause. then it’s really important. “Boss?” “It’s not true that the Funny Farm is entirely “Yes?” he says, without turning away from his leak-proof, Bob. It’s surrounded by an air-gap search. but it was designed to leak under certain very specific conditions. I find it troubling that these “We don’t know how the message got out,” I conditions do not appear to apply in the present say. “Isn’t it supposed to be a secure circumstances. In addition to memorizing this institution?” document you might want to review the files on “Yes, it is. Ah, that’s more like it.” Angleton GIBBOUS MOON and AXIOM REFUGE pulls a box file from its niche and blows before you go.” Pause. “And if you see Cantor, vigorously across its upper edge. Then he give my regards to the old coffin-dodger. I’m casually opens it. There’s a pop and a sizzle of particularly interested in hearing what he’s been ozone as the ward lets go, harmlessly bypassing up to for the past thirty years...” him—he is, after all, its legitimate owner.

“Hmm, in here somewhere...”

58 * * * glance, but underneath...we sent him to our Trust hospital for an MRI scan and he’s got the

characteristic lesions.” Renfield takes me back to the smoking room “Lesions?” and shuts the door. “He’s having a bad day, I’m afraid.” She pulls out a cardboard packet and She takes a deep drag from the cigarette. “His extracts a cigarette. “Smoke?” prefrontal lobes look like Swiss cheese. It’s one of the early signs of Krantzberg Syndrome. If “Uh, no thanks.” The sash windows are nailed we can keep him isolated from work for a shut and their frames painted over. There’s a couple more months, then retire him to a nice louvered vent near the top of the windows, quiet desk job, we might be able to stabilize grossly unfit for purpose: I try not to breathe too him. K Syndrome’s not like Alzheimer’s: if you deeply. “What happened to him?” remove the insult it frequently goes into She strikes a match and contemplates the flame remission. Mind you, he may also need a course for a moment. “Let’s see. He’s forty two. of chemotherapy. At various times my Married, two kids—he talks about them. Wife’s predecessors tried electroconvulsive treatment, a schoolteacher, his deep cover is that he works prefrontal lobotomy, neuroleptics, daytime in MI6 clerical.” (You’re not supposed to talk television, LSD—none of them work about your work to your partner, but it’s difficult consistently or reliably. The best treatment still enough that we’ve been given dispensation to seems to be bed rest followed by work therapy tell little white lies—and if necessary, HR will in a quiet, undemanding office environment.” back them up.) “He’s not field-qualified— Blue cloud spirals toward the ceiling. “But he’ll mostly he does theory—but he worked for Q never run a great summoning again.” Division and he was on secondment to the I’m beginning to regret not accepting her offer Abstract Attractor Working Group when he fell of a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke. My ill.” mouth’s dry. I sit down: “Do we have any idea In other words, he’s a theoretical thaumaturgist. what causes K Syndrome?” I’ve skimmed Magic being a branch of applied mathematics, GIBBOUS MOON, but the medical jargon when you carry out certain computational didn’t mean much to me; and AXIOM REFUGE operations, it has echoes in the Platonic realm of was even less helpful. (It turned out to be a pure mathematics—echoes audible to beings dense mathematical treatise introducing a whose true nature I cannot speak of, on account notation for describing certain categories of of doing so being a violation of the Official topological defect in a twelve-dimensional Secrets Act. Theoretical Thaumaturgists are the space.) Only the power supply for the guys who develop new efferent algorithms (or, mainframe—presumably the one Matron used— colloquially, “spells”): it’s an occupation with a seemed remotely relevant to the job in hand. high attrition rate. “There are several theories.” Renfield twitches “He’s convinced the Auditors are after him for ash on the threadbare carpet as she paces the thinking inappropriate thoughts on organization room. “It tends to hit theoretical computational time. There’s an elaborate confabulation, and it demonologists after about twenty years: looks a little like paranoid schizophrenia at first Merriweather is unusually young. It also hits

59 people who’ve worked in high-thaum fields for “No idea.” She drops what’s left of her cigarette too long. Initial symptoms include mild ataxia— and grinds it under the heel of a sensible shoe. you saw his hand shaking?—and heightened She catches my eye: “Don’t worry about it, the affect: it can be mistaken for bipolar disorder or Sisters keep everything orderly,” she says. “Do hyperactivity. There’s also the disordered you know what you want to do next?” thinking and auditory hallucinations typical of “Yes,” I say, damning myself for a fool before I some types of schizophrenia.” She pauses to take the next logical step: “I want to talk to the inhale. “There are two schools of thought, if you long term inmates.” leave out the Malleus Maleficarum stuff about souls contaminated by demonic effusions: one is that exposure to high thaum fields cause * * * progressive brain lesions. Trouble is, it’s rare enough that we haven’t been able to quantify that, and—” I’m half hoping Renfield will put her foot down “The other theory?” I prod. and refuse point blank to let me do it, but she only puts up a token fight: she makes me sign a “My favourite.” She nearly smiles. personal injury claims waiver and scribble out a “Computational demonology—you carry out written order instructing her to show me the calculations, you prove theorems; somewhere gallery. So why do I feel as if I’ve somehow else in the platonic realm of mathematics been outmanoeuvred? Listeners notice your activities and respond, yes? Well, there’s some disagreement over this, After I finish signing forms to her heart’s but the current orthodoxy in neurophysiology is content, she uncaps an ancient and battered that the human brain is a computational organ. speaking tube beside her desk and calls down it. We can carry out computational tasks, yes? “Matron, I am taking the inspector to see the We’re not very good at it, and at an individual observation gallery, in accordance with orders neurological level there’s no mechanism that from Head Office. He will then meet with the might invoke the core Turing theorems, but...if inmates in Ward Two. We may be some time.” you think too hard about certain problems you She screws the cap back on before turning to me might run the risk of carrying out a minor apologetically: “It’s vital to keep Matron summoning in your own head. Nothing big informed of our movements, otherwise she enough or bad enough to get out, but...those might mistake them for an escape attempt and florid daydreams? And the sick feeling take appropriate action.” afterwards because you can’t quite remember I swallow. “Does that happen often?” I ask, as what it was about? Something in another she opens the office door and stalks towards the universe just sucked a microscopic lump of corridor at the other end. neural tissue right out of your intraparietal “Once in a while a temporary patient gets stir- sulcus, and it won’t grow back.” crazy.” She starts up the stairs. “But the long- Urk. Not so much “use it or lose it” as “use it term residents...no, not so much.” and lose it”, then. Could be worse, could be a Upstairs, there’s a landing very similar to the NAND gate in there...“Do we know why some one we just left—with one big exception: a people suffer from it and others don’t?”

60 narrow, white-painted metal door in one wall, here”—meaning, Renfield herself—“has to let stark and raw, secured by a shiny brass padlock you out.” We reach the first periscope station in and a set of wards so ugly and powerful that the viewing gallery. “This is room two. It’s they make my skin crawl. There are no narrow- currently occupied by Alan Turing.” She notices gauge rails leading under this door, no obvious my start: “Don’t worry, it’s just his safety conductive surfaces, nothing to act as a conduit name.” for occult forces. Renfield fumbles with a huge (True names have power, so the Laundry is big key ring at her side, then unfastens the padlock. on call by reference, not call by value; I’m no “This is the way in via the observation gallery,” more “Bob Howard” than the “Alan Turing” in she says. “There are a couple of things to bear in room two is the father of computer science and mind. Firstly, the Nurses can’t guarantee your applied computational demonology.) safety: if you get in trouble with the prisoners, you’re on your own. Secondly, the gallery is a She continues: “The real Alan Turing would be Faraday cage, and it’s thaumaturgically nearly a hundred by now. All our long-term grounded too—it’d take a black mass and a residents, are named for famous multiple sacrifice to get anything going in here. mathematicians. We’ve got Alan Turing, Kurt You can observe the apartments via the Godel, Georg Cantor, and Benoit Mandelbrot. periscopes and hearing tubes provided. That’s Turing’s the oldest, Benny is the most recent— our preferred way—you can go into the ward by he actually has a payroll number, 16.” proceeding to the other end of the gallery, but I’m in five digits—I don’t know whether to I’d be very grateful if you could refrain from laugh or cry. “Who’s the nameless one?” I ask. doing so unless it’s absolutely essential. They’re difficult enough to manage as it is. Finally, if “That would be Georg Cantor,” she says slowly. you insist on meeting them, just try to remember “He’s probably in room four.” that appearances can be deceptive.” I bend over the indicated periscope, remove the “They’re not demented,” she adds: “just brass cap, and peer into the alien world of the extremely dangerous. And not in a Hannibal nameless K Syndrome survivor. Lecter bite-your-throat-out sense. They—the I see a whitewashed room, quite spacious, with long-term residents—aren’t regular Krantzberg a toilet area off to one side and a bedroom Syndrome cases. They’re stable and accessible through a doorless opening—much communicative, but...you’ll see for yourself.” like the short term ward. The same recessed I change the subject before she can scare me any metal tracks run around the floor, so that a more. “How do I get into the ward proper? And Nurse can reach every spot in the apartment. how do I leave?” There’s the usual comfortable, slightly shabby furniture, a pile of newspapers at one side of the “You go down the stairs at the far end of the sofa and a sideboard with a wind-up gallery. There’s a short corridor with a door at gramophone. In the middle of the floor there’s a each end. The doors are interlocked so that only table, and two chairs. Two men sit on either side one can be open at a time. The outer door will of an ancient travel chess set, leaning over a lock automatically behind you when it closes, game that’s clearly in its later stages. They’re and it can only be unlocked from a control panel both old, although how old isn’t immediately at this end of the viewing gallery. Someone up

61 obvious—one has gone bald, and his liver- of hours—for as long as I can remember.” spotted pate reminds me of an ancient tortoise, Right. I peer down the periscope again, looking but the other still has a full head of white hair at the game of not-chess. “Tell me about Dr and an impressive (but neatly trimmed) beard. Hexenhammer. Where is he?” They’re wearing polo shirts and grey suits of a kind that went out of fashion with the fall of the “Julius? I think he’s in an off-site meeting or Soviet Union. I’m willing to bet there are no something today,” she says vaguely. “Why?” laces in their brogues. “Just wondering. How long has he been The guy with the hair makes a move, and I working here?” squint through the periscope. That was wrong, “Before my time.” She pauses. “About thirty wasn’t it? I realize, trying to work out what’s years, I think.” happening. Knights don’t move like that. Then the implication of something Angleton said back Oh dear. “He doesn’t play chess either,” I in the office sinks in, and an icy sweat prickles speculate, as Cantor’s king makes a knight’s in the small of my back. “Do you play chess?” I move and Turing’s queen’s pawn beats a hasty ask Dr Renfield without looking round. retreat. A nasty suspicious thought strikes me— about Renfield, not the inmates. “Tell me, do “No.” She sounds disinterested. “It’s one of the Cantor and Turing play chess regularly?” I safe games—no dice, no need for a pencil and straighten up. paper. And it seems to be helpful. Why?” “Every afternoon for a couple of hours. Julius “Nothing, I hope.” But my hopes are dashed a says they’ve been doing it for as long as he can moment later when turtle-head responds with a remember. It seems to be good for them.” I look sideways flick of a pawn, two squares to the left, at her sharply. Her expression is vacant: wide and takes beardy’s knight. Turtle-head drops the awake but nobody home. The hairs on the back knight into a biscuit-tin along with the other of my neck begin to prickle. disused pieces; it sticks to the side, as if magnetized. Beardy nods, as if pleased, then Right. I am getting a very bad feeling about this. leans back and glances up. “I need to go and talk to the patients now. In person.” I stand up and hook the cap back over I recoil from the periscope a moment before I the periscope. “Stick around for fifteen minutes, meet his eyes. “The two players. Guy like a please, in case I need to leave in a hurry. tortoise, and another with a white beard and a Otherwise,” I glance at my watch, “it’s twenty full head of hair. They are...?” past one. Check back for me every hour on the “That’d be Turing and Cantor. Turing used to be half hour.” a Detached Special Secretary in Ops, I think; “Are you certain you need to do this?” Her eyes we’re not sure who or what Cantor was, but he narrow, suddenly alert once more. was someone senior.” I try not to twitch. DSS is one of those grades, the fuzzy ones that HR “You visit with the patients, don’t you?” I raise aren’t allowed to get their grubby little fingers an eyebrow. “And you do it on your own, with on. I think Angleton’s one. (Scuttlebutt is that Dr Hexenhammer up here to let you out if it’s an acronym for Deeply Scary Sorcerer.) there’s a problem. And the Sisters.” “They play chess every afternoon for a couple “Yes but—” She bites her tongue.

62 “Yes?” I give her the long stare. and nervous as a frog in his birthday suit. The first door gapes open, waiting for me. I walk “I’m rubbish with computers!” she bursts out. past it, and try not to jump out of my skin when “But you’re at risk!” it rattles shut behind me with a crash. There’s a “Well, there aren’t any computers except heavy clunk from the door ahead. As I reach it Matron down there, are there?” I grin crookedly, and push, it swings open to reveal a corridor trying not to show my unease. (Best not to dwell floored in parquet. An old codger in a green upon the fact that before 1945 “computer” was a tweed suit and bedroom slippers is shuffling out job description, not a machine.) “Relax, it’s not of an opening at one side, clutching an contagious.” enameled metal mug full of tea. He looks at me. She shrugs in surrender, then gestures at the far “Why, hello!” he croaks. “You’re new here, end of the observation gallery, where a curious aren’t you?” contraption sits above a pipe: “That’s the alarm. “You could say that.” I try to smile. “I’m Bob. If you want a Sister, pull the chain with the blue Who are you?” handle. If you want a general alarm which will “Depends who’s asking, young feller. Are you a call the duty psychiatrist, pull the red handle. psychiatrist?” There are alarm handles in every room.” “I don’t think so.” “Okay.” Blue for a Sister, Red for a psychiatrist who is showing all the signs of being under a He shuffles forward, heading towards a side bay geas or some other form of compulsion—except that, as I approach it, turns out to be a day room that I can’t check her out without attracting of some sort. “Then I’m not Napoleon Matron’s unwanted attention and probably Bonaparte!” tipping my hand. I begin to see why Andy didn’t Oh, very droll. The terror is fading, replaced by want to open this particular can of worms. “I a sense of disappointment. I trail after him: “The can deal with that.” staff have names for you all. Turing, Cantor, I head for the stairs at the far end of the gallery. Mandelbrot, and Godel. You’re not Cantor or Turing. That makes you one of Mandelbrot or

Godel.” * * * “So you’re undecided?” There’s a coffee table with a pile of newspapers on it in the middle of There’s nothing homely about the short corridor the day room, a couple of elderly chesterfields that leads from the bottom of the staircase to the and three armchairs that could have been looted Secure Wing. Whitewashed brick walls, glass from an old age home some time before the bricks near the ceiling to admit a wan echo of First World War. “And in any case, we haven’t daylight, and doors made of metal that have no been formerly introduced. So you might as well handles. Normally going into a situation like call me Alice.” this I’d be armed to the teeth, invocations and Alice—or Mandelbrot or Godel or whoever he efferent subroutines loaded on my PDA, hand of is—sits down. The armchair nearly swallows glory in my pocket and a necklace of garlic him. He beams at my bafflement, delighted to bulbs around my neck: but this time I’m naked, have found a new victim for his doubtless-

63 ancient puns. “He doesn’t know anything,” Alice confides in —this must be Godel, I realise, which means “Well, Alice. Isn’t this quite some rabbit hole Alice is Mandelbrot—Godel, then with a wink you’ve fallen down?” at me: “he doesn’t know anything, either.” “Yes, but it’s just the right size!” He seems to Godel shuffles into the rest room. “Is it tea-time appreciate having somebody to talk to. “Do you already?” know why you’re here?” “No!” Mandelbrot puts his mug down. “Get a “Yup.” I see an expression of furtive surprise watch!” steal across his face. I nod, affably. Try to mess with my head, sonny? I’ll mess with yours. “I was only asking because Alan and Georg are Except that this guy is quite possibly a DSS, and still playing—” if it wasn’t for the constant vigilance of the This has gone far enough. Apprehension Sisters and the distinct lack of electricity dissolves into indignation: “It’s not chess!” I hereabouts, he could turn me inside out as soon point out. “And none of you are insane.” as look at me. “Do you know why you’re here?” “Sssh!” Godel looks alarmed. “The Sisters “Absolutely!” He nods back at me. might overhear!” “So now that we’ve established the “We’re alone, except from Dr Renfield upstairs, preliminaries, why don’t we cut the bullshit?” and I don’t think she’s paying as much attention “Well.” He takes a cautious sip of his tea and to what’s going on down here as she ought to.” I the wrinkles on his forehead deepen. “I suppose stare at Godel. “In fact, she’s not really one of the Board of Directors want a progress report.” us at all, is she? She’s a shrink who specializes in K Syndrome, and none of you are suffering If the sofa I was perched on wasn’t a relative of from K Syndrome. So what are you doing in a venus flytrap my first reaction would leave me here?” clinging to the ceiling. “The who want a—” “Fish-slice! Hatstand!” Godel pulls an alarming “Not the band, the Board.” He looks mildly face, does a two-step backwards, and lurches irritated. “It’s been years since they last sent into the wall. Having shared a house with Pinky someone to spy on us.” and Brains, I am not impressed: as displays of Okay, so this is the Funny Farm; I should have ‘look at me, woo-woo’ go, Godel’s is pathetic. been expecting delusions. Play nice, Bob. “What Obviously he’s never met a real schizophrenic. are you supposed to be doing here?” I ask. “One of you wrote a letter, alleging “Oh Lord.” He rolls his eyes. “They sent a mistreatment by the staff. It landed on my boss’s tabula rasa again?” He raises his voice: “Kurt, desk and he sent me to find out why.” they sent us a tabula rasa again!” THUD. Godel bounces off the wall again, More shuffling. A stooped figure, shock-headed showing remarkable resilience for such old with white hair, appears in the doorway. He’s bones. “Do shut up old fellow,” chides wearing tinted round spectacles that look like Mandelbrot; “you’ll attract Her attention.” they fell off the back of a used century. “What? “I’ve met someone with K Syndrome, and I What?” He demands querulously. shared a house with some real lunatics once,” I

64 hint. “Save it for someone who cares.” owners to sell off to the developers. What about us?” “Oh bother,” says Godel, and falls silent. “Whoa!” I drop the newspaper and hold my “We’re not mad,” Mandelbrot admits. “We’re hands up. “Nobody tells me these things!” just differently sane.” “Told you!” crows Godel. “He’s part of the “Then why are you here?” conspiracy!” “Public health.” He takes a sip of tea and pulls a “Hang on”—I think fast—“this isn’t a normal face. “Everyone else’s health. Tell me, do they MoD property, is it? It’ll have been shuffled still keep an IBM 1602 in the back of the steam under the rug back in 1946 as part of the post- ironing room?” I must look blank because he war settlement. We’d really have to ask the sighs deeply and subsides into his chair. “Oh Audit Department about who owns it, but I’m dear. Times change, I suppose. Look, Bob, or pretty sure it’s not owned by any NHS Trust, whoever you call yourself—we belong here. and they won’t simply give it back“—my brain Maybe we didn’t when we first checked in for finally catches up with my mouth—“what the weekend seminar, but we’ve lived here so weekend seminar?” long that...you’ve heard of care in the community? This is our community. And we “Oh bugger,” says a new voice from the will be very annoyed with you if you try to doorway, a rich baritone with a hint of a scouse make us leave.” accent: “he’s not from the Board.” Whoops. The idea of a very annoyed DSS, with “What did I tell you?” Godel screeches. “It’s a or without a barbaric, pun-infested sense of conspiracy! He’s from Human Resources! They humour, is enough to make anyone’s blood run sent him to evaluate us!” cold. “What makes you think I’m going to try I am quickly getting a headache. “Let me get and make you leave?” this straight. Mandelbrot, you checked in thirty “It’s in the papers!” Godel squawks like an years ago for a weekend seminar, and they put offended parrot. “See here!” He brandishes a you in the secure ward? Godel: I’m not from tabloid at me and I take it, disentangling it from HR, I’m from Ops. You must be Cantor, right? his fingers with some difficulty. It’s a local copy Angleton sends his regards.” of the Metro, somewhat sticky with marmalade, That gets his attention. “Angleton? The skinny and the headline of the cover blares: “NHS young whipper-snapper’s still warming a chair, TRUST TO SELL ESTATE IN PFI DEAL“. is he?” Godel looks delighted. “Excellent!” “Um. I’m not sure I follow.” I look to “He’s my boss. And I want to know the rules of Mandelbrot in hope. that game you were just playing with Turing.” “We haven’t finished yet! But they’re selling off Three pairs of eyes swivel to point at me—four, all the hospital Trust’s property!” Mandelbrot for they are joined by the last inmate, standing bounces in his chair. “What about St Hilda’s? It in the doorway—and suddenly I feel very small was requisitioned from the St James charitable and very vulnerable. foundation back in 1943, and for the past ten years the Ministry of Defence been giving all “He’s sharp,” says Mandelbrot. “Too bad.” those old wartime properties back to their

65 “How do we know he’s telling the truth?” “Why does it matter?” I ask. I’m thinking that it Godel’s screech is uncharacteristically muted. could be anything; a 2,5 universal Turing “He could be from the Opposition! KGB, machine encoded in the moves of the pawns— Department 16! Or GRU, maybe.” that would fit—whatever it is, it’s symbolic communication, very abstract, very pared-back, “The Soviet Union collapsed a few decades and if they’re doing it in this ultimately ago,” volunteers Turing. “It said so in the firewalled environment and expecting to report Telegraph.” directly to the Board it’s got to be way above “Black Chamber, then.” Godel sounds my security clearance— unconvinced. “Because you’re acting cagey, lad. Which “What do you think the rules are?” asks Cantor, makes you too bright for your own good. Listen a drily amused expression stretching the to me: just try to convince yourself that we’re wrinkles around his eyes. playing chess, and Matron will let you out of “You’ve got pencils.” I can see one from here, here.” sitting on the sideboard on top of a newspaper “What’s thinking got to do with”—I stop. It’s folded at the crossword page. “And, uh...” what useless pretending. “Fuck. Okay, you’re a must the world look like from an inmate’s point research cell working on some ultimate black of view? “Oh. I get it.” problem, and you’re using the Farm because it’s (The realisation is blinding, sudden, and makes about the most secure environment anyone can me feel like a complete idiot.) imagine, and you’re emulating some kind of minimal universal Turing machine using the “The hospital! There’s no electricity, no chess board. Say, a 2,5 UTM—two registers, electronics—no way to get a signal out—but it five operations—you can encode the registers works both ways! You’re inside the biggest positionally in the chess board’s two damn grounded defensive pentacle this side of dimensions, and use the moves to simulate any HQ, and anything on the outside trying to get in other universal Turing machine, or a transform has got to get past the defences”—because that’s in an eleven-dimensional manifold like AXIOM what the Sisters are really about: not nurses but REFUGE—” perimeter guards—“you’re a theoretical research cell, aren’t you?” Godel’s waving frantically: “She’s coming! She’s coming!” I hear doors clanging in the “We prefer to call ourselves a think tank.” distance. Cantor nods gravely. Shit. “But why are you so afraid of the Nurses?” “Or even”—Mandelbrot takes a deep breath —“a brains trust!” “Back channels,” Cantor says cryptically. “Alan, be a good lad and try to jam the door for “A-ha! AhaHAHAHA! Hic.” Godel covers his a minute, will you? Bob, you are not cleared for mouth, face reddening. what we’re doing here, but you can tell “What do you think the rules are?” Cantor Angleton that our full report to the board should repeats, and they’re still staring at me, as if, as be ready in another eighteen months.” Wow— if... and they’ve been here since before the Laundry computerised its payroll system in the 1970s?

66 “Are you absolutely sure they’re not going to These theoreticians, they’re not in here because sell St Hilda’s off to build flats for yuppies? they’re mad, they’re in here because it’s the Because if so, you could do worse than tell only safe place to put people that dangerous. Georg here, it’ll calm him down—” This little weekend seminar of theirs that’s going to deliver some kind of uber-report. “Get me out of here and I’ll make damned sure What’s the topic? I look round, hunting for they don’t sell anything off!” I say fervently. clues. Something to do with applied “Or rather, I’ll tell Angleton. He’ll sort things demonology; what was the state of the art thirty out.” When I remind what’s going on here, years ago? Forty? Back in the stone age, they’ll be no more inclined to sell off St Hilda’s punched cards and black candles melted onto than they would be to privatize an atomic bomb. sheep’s skulls because they hadn’t figured out Something outside is rumbling and squealing on how to use integrated circuits...what they’re the metal rails. “You’re sure none of you doing with AXIOM REFUGE might be obsolete submitted a complaint about staff brutality?” already, or it might be earth-shatteringly “Absolutely!” Godel bounces up and down important. There’s no way to tell...yet. excitedly. I start back up the corridor, glancing inside “It must have been someone else.” Cantor Turing’s room. I spot the chess board. It’s off to glances at the doorway: “You’d better run along. one side, the door open and its occupant It sounds as if Matron is having second thoughts elsewhere—still holding the line against Nurse about you.” Ratchet. I rush inside and close the door. The table is still there, the chessboard set up with I’m halfway out of the carnivorous sofa, that curious end-game. The first thing that leaps struggling for balance: “What kind of—” out at me is that there are two pawns of each “Go!” colour, plus most of the high-value pieces. The layout doesn’t make much sense—why is the I stumble out into the corridor. From the far end, white king missing?—and I wish I’d spent more near the nursing station, I hear a grinding noise time playing the game, but...on impulse, I reach as of steel wheels spinning furiously on rails, out and touch the black pawn that’s parked in and a mechanical voice blatting: “InTRU-der! front of the king. EsCAPE ATTempt! All patients must go to their go to their go to their bedROOMs There’s an odd kind of electrical tingle you get IMMediateLY!” when you make contact with certain types of summoning grid. I get a powerful jolt of it right Whoops. I turn and head in the opposite now, sizzling up my arm and locking my fingers direction, towards the airlock leading up to the in place around the head of the chess piece. I try viewing gallery. “Open up!” I yell, thumping the to pull it away from the board, but it’s no good: outer door, which is securely fastened: “Dr it only wants to move up or down, left or Renfield! Time’s up! I need to go, now!” right...left or right? I blink. It’s a state machine There’s no response. I see the colour-coded all right: one that’s locked by the law of handles dangling by the door and yank the red sympathy to some other finite state automaton, one repeatedly. Nothing happens, of course. one that grinds down slow and hard. I should have smelled a set-up from the start. I move the piece forward one square. It’s

67 surprisingly heavy, the magnet a solid weight in ears, and I smell ozone as the world goes dark— its base—but more than magnetism holds it in contact with the board. As soon as I stop moving I feel a sharp sting in my fingertips. * * * “Ouch!” I raise them to my mouth just as there’s a crash from outside. “InMATE! InMATE!” I begin to turn as a shadow falls across the board. —And the chittering, buzzing cacophony of voices in my head subsides as I realize—I? Yes, “Bad patient!” It buzzes. “Bad PATients will be I’m back, I’m me, what the hell just happened? inCAR-cerATED! COME with ME!” —I’m kneeling on a hard surface, bowed over I recoil from the stellate snout and beady lenses. so my head is between my knees. My right hand The mechanical nurse reaches out with arms —something’s wrong with it. My fingers don’t that end in metal pincers instead of hands: I want to open. They’re cold as ice, painful and side-step around the table and reach down to the prickly with impending cramp. I try to open my chessboard for one of the pieces, grasping at eyes. “Urk,” I say, for no good reason. I hope random. My hand closes around the white I’m not about to throw up. queen, fingers snapping painfully shut on Sssss... contact, and I shove it hard, seeking the path of least resistance to an empty cell in the grid My back doesn’t want to straighten up properly between the pawn I just moved and the black but the floor under my nose is cold and stony king. and it smells damp. I try opening my eyes. It’s dark and cool, and a chilly blue light flickers off Nurse Ratchet spins round on her base so fast the dusty flagstones in front of me. I’m in a that her cap flies off (revealing a brushed cellar? I push myself up laboriously with my aluminium hemisphere beneath), emits a left hand, looking around for whatever’s hissing deafening squeal of feedback-like white noise, at me. then says, “Integer Overflow?” in a surprised baritone. “BAD Patient! Ssssss!” The voice behind my back doesn’t belong to anything human. I “Back off right now or I castle,” I warn her, my scramble around on hands and knees, hampered aching fingertips hovering over the nearest rook. by the chessboard glued to my frozen right “Integer overflow. Integer overflow? Divide by hand. zero.” Clunk. The Sister shivers as a relay inside I’m in Matron’s lair. its torso clicks open, resetting it. Then: “Matron WILL see you NOW!” Matron lives in a cave-like basement room, its low ceiling supported by whitewashed brick and I grab the chess piece, but Nurse Ratchet lunges floored in what look to be the original Victorian in the blink of an eye and has my wrist in a vise- era stone slabs. The windows are blocked by like grip. It tugs, sending a burning pain through columns of bricks, rotting mortar crumbling my carpal tunnel stressed wrist. I can’t let go of between them. Steel rails run around the room, the chess piece: as my hand comes up, the chess and riding them, three Sisters glide back and board comes with it as a rigid unit, all the pieces forth between me and the open door. Their hanging in place. A monstrous buzzing fills my optics flicker with amethyst malice. Off to one

68 side, a wall of pale blue cabinets lines one entire I’m nauseous and sweating bullets, but there is wall: the front panel (covered in impressive- this about being trapped in a dungeon by a looking dials and switches) leaves me in no constrained class four manifestation: whether or doubt as to what it is. A thick braid of cables not you call them demons, they play by the runs from one open cabinet (in whose depths a rules. As long as Matron hasn’t managed to get patchboard is just visible) across a row of me sectioned, I’m not a patient, and therefore wooden trestles to the middle of the floor, where she has no authority to detain me. I hope. they split into thick bundles and dangle to the “Doc-TOR HexenHAMMer has been SUM- five principal corners of the live summoning moned,” grates the middle Sister. “When he RE- grid that is responsible for the beautiful cobalt- turns to sign the PA-pers Doc-TOR RenFIELD blue glow of Cerenkov radiation—and tells me has prePARED, we will HAVE YOU.” I’m in deep trouble. A repetitive squeaking noise draws close. A “Integer overflow,” intones one of the Sisters. fourth Sister glides through the track in the Her claws go snicker-snack, the surgical steel doorway, pushing a trolley. A white starched gleaming in the dim light. cotton cloth supports a row of gleaming ice-pick Here’s the point: Matron isn’t just a 1960s shaped instruments. The chorus row of Sisters mainframe: we can’t work miracles and blocks the exit as effectively as a column of riot artificial intelligence is still fifty years in the police. They glide back and forth as ominously future. However, we can bind an as a rank of Space Invaders. extradimensional entity and compel it to serve, “I do not consent to treatment,” I tell the middle and even communicate with it by using a 1960s Sister. I’m betting that she’s the one the mainframe as a front-end processor. Which is all nameless horror in the summoning grid is very well, especially if it’s in a secure air- talking through, using the ancient mainframe as gapped installation with no way of getting out. an i/o channel. “You can’t make me consent. But what if some double-domed theoreticians And lobotomy requires the patient’s consent, in who are working on a calculus of contagion this country. So why bother?” using AXIOM REFUGE accidentally talk in front of one of its peripheral units about a way “You WILL con-SENT.” of sending a message? What if a side-effect of The buzzing voice doesn’t come from the robo- their research has accidentally opened a chink in nurses, or the hypertrophied pocket calculator the firewall? They’re not going to exploit it...but on the opposite wall. The summoning grid they’re not the only long-term inmates, are flickers: deep inside it, shadowy and they? In fact, if I was really paranoid I might translucent, the bound and summoned demon even imagine they’d put Matron up to mischief squats and grins at me with things that aren’t in order to make the point that closing the Farm eyes set close above something that isn’t a is a really bad idea. mouth. “I’m not a patient,” I tell the Sisters. “You are “You MUST con-SENT. I WILL be free.” not in receipt of a valid Section two, three, four, or 136 order subject to the Mental Health Act, I try to let go of the chess piece, but my fingers and you’re bloody well not getting a 5(2) or 5(4) are clamped around it so tightly I’m beginning out of me either.” to lose sensation. Pins and needles tingle up my

69 wrist, halfway to the elbow. “Let me guess,” I “Acc-CESS to the LAUNDRY!” buzzes the manage to say: “you sent the complaint. Right?” summoning grid’s demonic inmate. “We wants re-VENGE! Freedom!” In other words, it wants “The SEC-ure ward in-MATES are under my the same old same old. These creatures are so CARE. I am RE-quired to CARE for them. The predictable, just like most predators. It’s just a short stay in-MATES are use-LESS. YOU will shame I’m between it and what it evidently be use-FULL.” wants. I see it now: why Matron smuggled out the Two of the Sisters begin to glide menacingly message that prompted Andy to send me. And towards me: one drifts towards the mainframe it’s an oh-shit moment. Of course the enchained console, but the fourth stays stubbornly in front entity who provides Matron with her back-end of the door. “Come on, we can talk,” I offer, intelligence wants to be free: but it’s not just tongue stumbling in my too-dry mouth. “Can’t about going home to Hilbert-space hell or we work something out?” wherever it comes from. She wants to be free to go walkabout in our world, and for that she I don’t really believe that the trapped needs someone to set up a bridge from the grid extradimensional abomination wants anything to an appropriate host. (Of which there is a I’d willingly give it, but I’m running low on plentiful supply, just upstairs from here.) options and anything that buys time for me to “Enjoying the carnal pleasures of the flesh,” think is valuable. they used to call it; there’s a reason most “Free-DOM!” The two moving Sisters cultures have a down on the idea of demonic commence a flanking movement. I try to let go possession. She needs a brain that’s undamaged of the chess board and dodge past the by K Syndrome, but not too powerful (Cantor summoning grid, but I slip—and as I stumble I and friends would be impossible to control), nor shove the chess board hard. The piece I’m one of the bodies whose absence would alert us holding clicks sideways like a car’s gearshift, that the Farm was out of control (so neither and locks into place: “DIVIDE BY ZERO!” Renfield nor Hexenhammer are suitable). Shriek the Sisterhood, grinding to a halt. “Renfield,” I say. “You got her, didn’t you?” I’m I stagger a drunken two-step around Matron, on my feet now, crouched but balancing on two who snarls at me and throws a punch. The wall points, not three. “Managed to slip a geas on of the grid absorbs her claws with a snap and her, but she can’t release you herself. crackle of blue lightning, and I flinch. Behind Hexenhammer, too?” me, a series of clicks warn me that the Sisters “Cle-VER.” Matron gloats at me from inside are resetting: any second now they’ll come back her summoning grid. “Hex-EN-heimer first. on-line and grab me. But for the moment, my Soon, you TOO.” fingers aren’t stuck to the board. “Why me?” I demand, backing away from the “Come to MEEE!” The thing in the grid howls doorway and the walls—the Sister’s track runs as the first of her robot minions’ eyes light up right round the room, following the walls— with amber malice, and the wheels begin to skirting the summoning grid warily. “What do turn. “I can give you Free-DOM!” you want?” “Fuck off.” That wiring loom in the open

70 cabinet is only four metres away. Within its My vision dims as ozone tickles my nostrils: I open doors I see more than just an i/o interface: can see smoke. I’ve got to get out of here, I in the bottom of the rack there’s a bunch of stuff realize: something’s burning. Not surprising, that looks like a tea-stained circuit diagram I really. Mainframe power supplies—especially was reading the other day— ones that have been running steady for nearly forty years—don’t take kindly to being hard Why exactly did Angleton point me at the power power-cycled, and the 1602 was one of the last supply requirements? Could it possibly be computers built to run on tubes: I’ve probably because he suspected Matron was off her trolley blown half its circuit boards. I glance around, and I might have to switch her off? but aside from one of the sisters (lying on her “Con-SENT is IRREL-e-VANT! PRE-pare to be side, narrow-gauge wheels spinning maniacally) loboto-MIZED—” I’m the only thing moving. Summoning grids Talk about design kluges—they stuck the i/o don’t generally survive being power-cycled controller in the top of the power supply rack! either, especially if the thing they were set to The chess board is free in my left hand, pieces contain, like an electric fence, is halfway across still stuck to it. And now I know what to do. I them when the power comes back on. I warily take hold of one of the rooks, and wiggle until I bypass the blue, crackling pentacle as I make feel it begin to slide into a permitted move. my way towards the corridor outside. Because, after all, there are only a few states I think when I get home, I’m going to write a that this automaton can occupy and if I can report urgently advising HR to send some crash the Sisters for just a few seconds while I human nurses for a change—and to reassure get to the power supply— Cantor and his colleagues that they’re not about The Sisters begin to roll around the edge of the to sell off the roof over their heads just because room, trying to get between me and the row of they happen to have finished their research cabinets. I wiggle my hand and there’s a taste of project. Then I’m going to get very drunk and violets, and a loud rattle of solenoids tripping. take a long weekend off work. And maybe when The nearest Sister’s motors crank up to a tooth- I go back, I’ll challenge Angleton to a game of grinding whine and she lunges past me, rolling chess. into her colleagues with a tooth-jarring crash. I don’t expect to win, but it’ll be very interesting I lunge forward, dropping the chess board, and to see what rules he plays by. reach for the master circuit breaker handle. I twist it just as screech of feedback behind me - end - announces the Matron-monster’s fury: “I’M FREE!” It shrieks, just as I twist the handle hard in the opposite direction. Then the lights dim, there’s a bright blue flash from the summoning grid, and a bang so loud it rattles my brains in my head. For a few seconds I stand stupidly, listening to the tooth-chattering clatter of overloaded relays.

71 Overtime agencies, everyone who works in the greeting card business, and dodgy men in red suits who Charles Stross hang out in toy shops and scare small children illustration by carl wiens by shouting “ho ho HO!” By the time I got out of hospital in September the Christmas seasonal All bureaucracies obey certain iron laws, and displays were already going up in the shops: one of the oldest is this: get your seasonal leave mistletoe and holly and metallized tinsel booked early, lest you be trampled in the rush. pushing out the last of summer’s tanning lotion I broke the rule this year, and now I’m paying and Hawaiian shirts. the price. It’s not my fault I failed to book my I can’t say I’ve ever been big on the English Christmas leave in time—I was in hospital and Suburban Christmas. First you play join-the- heavily sedated. But the ruthless cut and thrust dots with bank holidays and what’s left of your of office politics makes no allowance for those annual leave, to get as many consecutive days who fall in the line of battle: “You should have off work as possible. Then instead of doing foreseen your hospitalization and planned something useful and constructive with it you around it” said the memo from HR when I gorge yourself into a turkey-addled stomach- complained. They’re quite right, and I’ve made bloating haze, drink too much cheap plonk, pick a note to book in advance next time I’m about to fights with the in-laws, and fall asleep on the be abducted by murderous cultists or enemy sofa in front of the traditional family-friendly spies. crap the BBC pumps out every December 25th I briefly considered pulling an extended sickie, in case the wee ones are watching. These days but Brenda from Admin has a heart of gold; she the little ’uns are all up in their rooms, playing pointed out that if I volunteered as Night Duty Chicks v. Zombies 8.0 with the gore dialled to Officer over the seasonal period I could not only splashy-giblets-halfway-up-the-walls (only claim triple pay and time off in lieu, I’d also be adults bother watching TV as a social activity working three grades above my assigned role. these days) but has Auntie Beeb noticed? Oh no For purposes of gaining experience points in the they haven’t! So it’s crap pantomimes and Mary fast-track promotion game they’ve steering me Poppins and re-runs of The Two Ronnies for onto, that’s hard to beat. So here I am, in the you, sonny, whether you like it or not. It’s like office on Christmas Eve, playing bureaucratic being trapped in 1974 forever—and you can Pokémon as the chilly rain drums on the roof. forget about escaping onto the internet: (Oh, you wondered what Mo thinks of this? everybody else has had the same idea, and the She’s off visiting her ditz of a mum down in tubes are clogged. Glastonbury. After last time we agreed it would Alternatively you can spend Christmas alone in be a good idea if I kept a low profile. Christmas: the office, where at least it’s quiet once the one time of year when you can’t avoid the everyone else has gone home. You can get some nuts in your family muesli. But I digress.) work done, or read a book, or surreptitiously * * * play Chicks v. Zombies 8.0 with the gore dialled down to suitable-for-adults. At least, that’s the Christmas: the season of goodwill towards all way it’s suppose to work . . . except when it men—except for bank managers, credit scoring doesn’t, like now.

72 Let’s rewind a week: flourish. “Behold! The duty officer’s watch room.” I’m pecking away at a quality assessment form on my office PC when there’s a knock at the We are in the New Annexe, a depressing New door. I glance up. It’s Bill from Security. “Are Brutalist slab of concrete that sits atop a you busy right now?” he asks. dilapidated department store somewhere south of the Thames: electrically heated, poorly “Um.” My heart just about skips a beat. “Not insulated, and none of the window frames fit really . . . ?” properly. My department was moved here nearly Bill is one of our regular security officers: a a year ago, while they rebuild Dansey House former blue-suiter, salt-and-pepper moustache, (which will probably take a decade, because silver comb-over, but keeps trim and marches they handed it over to a public-private everywhere like he’s still in the military. “It’s partnership). Nevertheless, the fittings and about your Christmas shift,” he says, smiling fixtures of the NDO’s office make the rest of the vaguely and hefting a bunch of keys the size of New Annexe look like a futuristic marvel. The a hand grenade. “I’m supposed to show you the khaki-painted steel frame of the bunk, topped ropes, y’know? Seeing as how you’re on with green wool blankets, looks like something overnight duty next week.” He jangles the key out of a wartime movie—there’s even a fading ring. “If you can spare half an hour?” poster on the wall that says CARELESS LIPS My heartbeat returns to normal. I glance at the SINK SHIPS. email on my computer screen: “Yeah, sure.” It’s “This is a joke. Right?” I’m pointing at the taken me about five seconds to cycle from mild green-screen terminal on the desk, and the huge terror to abject relief; he’s not here to chew me dial-infested rotary phone beside it. out over the state of my trainers. “No sir.” Bill clears his throat. “Unfortunately “Very good, sir. If you’d care to step this way?” the NDO’s office budget was misfiled years ago From Bill, even a polite request sounds a little and nobody knows the correct code to like an order. requisition new supplies. At least it’s warm in winter: you’re right on top of the classified “You haven’t done the graveyard shift before, document incinerator room, and it’s got the only have you sir? There’s not a lot to it—usually. chimney in the building.” You’re required to remain in the building and on call at all times. Ahem, that’s within reason, of He points out aspects of the room’s dubious course: toilet breaks permitted—there’s an architectural heritage while I’m scoping out the extension—and there’s a bunk bed. You accessories. I poke at the rusty electric kettle: probably won’t have to do anything, but in the “Will anyone say anything if I bring my own unlikely event, well, you’re the night duty espresso maker?” officer.” “I think they’ll say ‘that’s a good idea,’ sir. Now, We climb a staircase, pass through a pair of if you’d care to pay attention, let me talk you singularly battered fire doors, and proceed at a through the call management procedures and quick march along a puce-painted corridor with what to do in event of an emergency.” high wired-glass windows, their hinges painted * * * shut. Bill produces his keyring with a jangling

73 The Laundry, like any other government in the corners of my vision) that contains a bureaucracy, operates on a 9-to-5 basis—except typed list of codewords relating to secret for those inconvenient bits that don’t. The latter operations. It doesn’t say what the operations tend to be field operations of the kind where, if are, but it lists the supervisors associated with something goes wrong, they really don’t want to them—the people to call if one of the agents hits find themselves listening to the voicemail the panic button. system saying, “Invasions of supernatural brain- I’ve got an office to hang out in. An office with eating monsters can only be dealt with during a bunk bed like something out of a fifties Carry core business hours. Please leave a message On film about conscript life in the army, a after the beep.” (Supernatural? Why, yes: we’re chimney for the wind to whistle down (the that part of Her Majesty’s government that deals better to keep me awake), a desk with an ancient with occult technologies and threats. Certain computer terminal (shoved onto the floor to abstruse branches of pure mathematics can have make room for my laptop), and a kettle (there’s drastic consequences in the real world—we call a bathroom next door with a sink, a toilet, and a them “magic”—by calling up the gibbering shower that delivers an anemic trickle of tepid horrors with which we unfortunately share a water). There’s even a portable black-and-white multiverse [and the platonic realm of TV with a cheap Freeview receiver (this is the mathematical truth]. Given that computers are first year since they discontinued analog tools that can be used for performing certain broadcasting) in case I feel compelled to watch classes of calculation really fast, it should come reruns of The Two Ronnies. as no surprise that Applied Computational Demonology has been a growth area in recent All the modern conveniences, in other years.) words. . . . My job, as Night Duty Officer, is to sit tight and * * * answer the phone. In the unlikely event that it The Office Party is scheduled to take place on rings, I have a list of numbers I can call. Most of Wednesday afternoon, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. them ring through to duty officers in other sharp. departments, but one of them calls through to a special Army barracks in Hereford, another goes As civil servants, however irregular, we’re not straight to SHAPE in Brussels—that’s NATO’s paid enough to compete with the bankers and European theatre command HQ—and a third corporate Tarquins and Jocastas who fill most of dials direct to the COBRA briefing room in the office blocks in this part of the city; even in Downing Street. Nobody in the Laundry has these straitened times they can afford to drop a ever had to get the Prime Minister out of bed in couple of hundred notes per head on bubbly. So the small hours, but there’s always a first time: we don’t get a posh restaurant outing: instead more importantly, it’s the NDO’s job to make we have to tart up the staff canteen with some that call if a sufficiency of shit hits the fan on added tinsel, fake snow spray on the windows, his watch. and a molting pine tree in a pot by the fire exit. I’ve also got a slim folder (labelled TOP Pinky and Brains kindly installed their home SECRET and protected by disturbing wards that stereo—homemade, not homesized—in the flicker across the cover like electrified floaters number two lecture theatre, for the obligatory

74 dance; Elinor and Beth (with a nod and a wink over in Research and Development, quaffing from Oversight) hit on an outside caterer for the port with the double-domes, dammit—an sort of comestibles essential to a party and altogether more civilized session than this one. unheard-of in a civil service canteen (which “We were planning on meeting up later.” could manage cupcakes and sherry trifle if push “Well, come on then. Wouldn’t want to miss the came to shove, but whose idea of pizza or curry decent seats for the floor show, would we?” is ghastly beyond belief). “Floor show?” I close the door behind us. There’s a Dunkirk spirit to the whole affair: with the new government in the driving seat, “Yes, we have a visitor from Forecasting Ops. I wielding the chainsaw of budget cuts, there’s got the email a couple of days ago. One Dr. not a lot of luxury to go round. But we’re good Kringle has condescended to descend and give at make-do-and-mend in this department—it’s us some sort of pep talk about the year ahead.” bred in our bureaucratic bones—and with the “Kringle?” My cheek twitches. The name’s aid of a five hundred quid ents budget (to cover unfamiliar. “From Forecasting Ops? Who are the hundred odd folks who work here), we make they . . .” I’ve heard rumors about them, but it work. nothing concrete: it’s probably one of those There is a humdrum ritual for an office vague backwaters beavering away in isolation. Christmas party anywhere in England. The Why on earth would they want to send someone morning beforehand, work takes on a to talk to us now? lackadaisical feel. Meetings are truncated by 11 “Yes, exactly.” Andy spares me a sidelong a.m.; agendas updated, email filters set to glance. “Don’t ask me, all I know is what I vacation. Some folks—the few, the lucky— found in my inbox. Mail from HR, let him give begin to clear their desk drawers, for they know a little motivational pep talk at the party. Don’t they shall not be coming back to work until the worry,” he adds quietly, “it’ll all work out for new year. A wilted air of festivity wafts through the best in the end. You’ll see. Just sit tight and the corridors of power, like a slightly moist bite your tongue.” I get it. Andy is wearing his crêpe banner. bearer-of-bad-news face while steering me “Bob?” I look up from my Minesweeper towards the junior officer’s bench. Something is session: it’s Andy, my sometime manager, about to come down the chute, and all the leaning in the doorway. “You coming to lunch?” Christmas cheer in the world isn’t going to cover up the stench of manure. As a I stretch, then mouse over to the screen lock. “Is management-grade employee—albeit a junior it that time already?” I don’t work for Andy one—I’m required to show solidarity. Hence these days, but he seems to take a proprietorial being tipped the nod and a wink. interest in how I’m doing. I begin to wonder what it can possibly be. “Yes.” His head bounces up and down. He looks slightly guilty, like a schoolboy whose been * * * caught with his hands in the sweets jar once too The Duty Officer’s room is upstairs, just under often. “Is Mo . . . ?” the gently pitched roof of the New Annexe. “She’s off-site today.” I stand up. Actually she’s There’s a wired-shut skylight, and the wind howls and gibbers overhead: occasionally

75 there’s a sound like gravel on concrete as an One of the perks of being Night Duty Officer is errant gust flings a cupful of freezing cold water that I can poke my nose anywhere I like—after at the glass, followed by a hollow booming all, I’m responsible for the security of the noise from the chimney. The chimney is indeed building. In fact, I can go into places where I’d warm, but it’s cooling fast: I guess they’ve shut normally get my nasal appendage chopped right down the incinerator over the holiday period. off if I had the temerity to sniff around without It’s just past eleven at night, and there’s no way authorization. I can look inside Angleton’s in hell I’m going to be able to sleep while the office, tip-toe between the dangerously active storm is blowing. canopic jars and warded optical workbenches of Field Service, walk the thickly carpeted, dusty When the holiday falls on a weekend day (as corridors of Mahogany Row, and pester the Boxing Day does this year) everyone gets a day night-shift zombies (sorry: of course I meant to off in lieu at the beginning of the following say, Residual Human Resources) in the week except the Night Duty Officer, who is in it basement. In fact, I’m pretty much encouraged for up to four days at triple pay—as long as he to keep an eye on things, just as long as I stay doesn’t go mad with boredom first. within range of the Duty Officer’s Phone. I’ve been on duty for six hours and I’ve already You might think that’s a catch, but the Duty caught up on my work email—at least, I’ve Officer’s Phone —once you unscrew the huge replied to everything that needs replying to, and lump of Bakelite—is a remarkably simple piece am well into ignoring all the Powerpoints that of fifties-vintage electronics. It’s not even need ignoring—and gotten bored with gaming. scrambled: the encryption is handled at the The TV’s on in the background, but it’s the exchange level. So after a brisk fifteen minutes same-old family-friendly fare. I don’t want to programming a divert into the PBX so it’ll ring start on the two fat novels I’ve stockpiled for the through to my iPhone, I’m free to go exploring. weekend too early, so there’s only one thing to do. I abandon my cup of tea, pick up my torch, (Did you really think I was going to spend three iPhone and warrant card, and tip-toe forth to days and nights nursing a land-line that hasn’t poke my nose where it doesn’t belong. rung in sixteen years?) ’Twas the night before Christmas, the office was * * * closed, Recipe for Office Christmas Party in the Season The transom was shut, the staff home in repose; of Cuts: The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, Take: But St. Nicholas won’t be coming because this is 28 junior administrative and secretarial staff a Designated National Security Site within the 17 clerical and accounts officers meaning of Para 4.12 of Section 3 of the 12 management grade officers Official Secrets Act (Amended) and 4 spies unauthorised intrusion on such a site is an 5 human resources managers arrestable offense ... 9 building security staff Had enough of my poetry yet? That’s why they 6 technical support officers pay me to fight demons instead. 9 demonologists

76 (optional: 1 or more double-agents, ancient for an entertainments budget—very generously, lurking horrors from beyond the stars, and in view of the current Treasury strategic deficit zombies) reduction program.” Add crêpe paper hats, whistles, party poppers, (Applause.) tinsel decorations, fairy lights, whoopee “And now, Dr. Kringle has asked if he can say a cushions, cocktail snacks, supermarket mince few words to us all about the year ahead . . .” pies, and cheap wine and spirits to taste. * * * Mix vigorously (blender setting at “pre-Disco”) and pour into staff canteen that has been in I walk the darkened halls. urgent need of redecoration since 1977. Seat at The New Annexe predates the fad for rat-maze benches. Punch repeatedly (not more than 10% cubicle farms in offices, but that never stopped alcohol by volume), serve the turkey, set fire to anyone. The result is a curious architectural the Christmas pudding, discover fire mixture of tiny locked offices hived off extinguisher is six months past mandatory HSE artificially lit corridors, alternating with barnlike inspection deadline, and suppress. open plan halls full of cheap desks and Allow to stand while Martin from Tech Support underpowered computers, their cases yellowing drunkenly invites Kristin from Accounts to audit with age. his packet (during that gap in the hubbub when Here’s the vast expanse of what used to be the every other conversation stops simultaneously typing pool—so-called because in the old days and you can hear a pin drop); Vera from there used to be officers here who couldn’t use a Logistics asks Ayesha from HR if her presence keyboard. These days it’s our administrative at the party means that she’s finally found Jesus: core, a place where civil servants come to die. and George from Security throws up in the The Laundry, perforce, must find work for many Christmas tree tub. idle hands—the hands of everyone who comes And then . . . to our attention and must needs be made a job offer they’re not allowed to refuse. Luckily Andy tings his knife on the edge of his glass bureaucracy breeds, and it takes many meetings repeatedly until everybody finally notices he’s to manage the added complexity of trying to get their attention, at which point he administration required by our chronic stands up. I look wistfully at the tray of slightly overstaffing. There are people here who I only stale mince pies in the middle of the table, and know of through their Outlook calendars, which withdraw my hand. are perpetually logjammed. Entire departments “Quiet, please! First of all, I’d like to take this beaver away in anonymous quiet, building paper opportunity to thank Facilities for organizing a dams to hold the real world at bay. I shine my party at short notice and under considerable torch across empty in-trays, battered chairs, budgetary constraints—a budget which is desks that reek of existential pointlessness. I unavoidably much tighter than for last year’s could have been trapped here for good, I festivities. Thanks to Amber and Lee for realize. I shudder as I move on. Being part of organizing the external catering, and to Dr. the Laundry’s active service arm brings hazards Kringle here for kindly approving our request of its own: but dying of boredom isn’t one of

77 them. executives’ secretaries. One of the copiers has a print job stacked facedown in the output tray. I turn left and take a short cut through That strikes me as odd: given the nature of our Mahogany Row. Here the carpet is thick, the work here, Security take a dim view of woodwork polished rather than painted over. documents being left lying around. But Security Individual offices with huge oak desks and won’t be making their rounds for a few days. leather recliners, walls hung with dark oil Probably best to take the printouts and stick paintings of old hands in wartime uniform. them in the internal post to whoever ran them Nobody is ever in any of these offices—rumor off—or in a locked safe pending a chewing-out has it they all transcended, or were never human if it’s anything confidential. in the first place—these sinister and barely glimpsed senior officers who ran the I flip the first sheet over to look for the header organization from its early years. page, and do a double take. Buttocks! Pretty damned hairy ones, at that. So someone was (I’ve got my own theory about Mahogany Row, enjoying the party. which is that the executives who would be here don’t exist yet. In the depths of the coming The next page features more buttocks, and crisis, as the stars come into cosmic alignment they’re a lot less male, judging by the well-filled and the old ones return to stalk the Earth, the stockings and other identifying characteristics. I organization will have to grow enormously shake my head. I’m beginning to work out a bigger, taking on new responsibilities and more response—I’m going to pin them on one of the staff—at which point, those of us who survive staff notice boards, with an anonymous appeal are going to move on up here to direct the war for folks to wipe down the copier glass after effort. Assuming the powers that be have more each use—when I get to the third sheet. sense than to fill the boardroom with the usual Whoever sat on the copier lid that time didn’t recycled corporate apparatchiks, that is. If they have buttocks, hairy or otherwise—or any other don’t, may Cthulhu have mercy on our souls.) mammalian features for that matter. What I’m As I turn the corner past the executive lavatory holding looks to be a photocopy of the business and approach the fire door I have a most end of a giant cockroach. peculiar sensation. Why do I feel as if I’m being Maybe I’m not alone after all. . . . watched? I wonder. I clear my throat. “Duty Officer.” I reach into my pocket and pull out my * * * warrant card: “Show yourself!” After Kringle drops his turd in the punch bowl The card glows pale green in the darkness; of seasonal spirit, the party officially ceases to nothing stirs. be fun, even for drably corporate values of fun. My appetite evaporates, too: they can keep the “Huh.” I palm it, feeling stupid. The night pies for all I care. I grab a bottle of Blue Nun watchmen are about, but they’re not supposed to and tip-toe back towards my cubicle in the come up here. The wind and rain whooshes and Counter Possession Unit. rattles beyond the office windows. Fuck. Mo isn’t here; she’s already headed off to I push the door open. It’s yet another see her mum. She’d understand, though. I’m on administrative annexe, presumably for the duty from tomorrow through Monday morning,

78 and not supposed to leave the building. I was “What do you make of it?” he asks, bluntly. going to go home tonight—run the washing I look at his cigarette, for a moment wishing I machine, pack a bag with clean clothes for the smoked. “It’s not looking good. As signs of the weekend, that sort of thing—but right now the apocalypse go, the last office Christmas party urge to get blind falling-down drunk is calling ever is a bit of a red flag.” me. Andy hides a cough with his fist. “I sincerely Because this is the last Christmas party at the hope not.” Laundry. “What’s Kringle’s track record?” I ask. “Surely I pull out my phone to call Mo, then pause. he’s been pulling rabbits out of hats long She’s got her hands full with mum right now. enough we can run a Bayesian analysis and see Why add to her worries? And besides, this isn’t how well he . . .” I trail off, seeing Andy’s a secure voice terminal: I can’t safely say expression. everything that needs to be said. (The compulsion to confidentiality runs deep, backed “He’s one of the best precognitives we’ve ever up by my oath of office. To knowingly break it had, so I’m told. And what he’s saying backs up risks very unpleasant consequences.) I’m about Dr. Mike’s revised time frame for CASE to put my phone away when Andy clears his NIGHTMARE GREEN.” (The end of the throat. He’s standing right behind me, an unlit world, when—in the words of the mad seer— cigarette pinched between two fingers. “Bob?” the stars come right. It’s actually a seventy-year long window during which the power of magic I take another deep breath. “Yeah?” multiplies monstrously, and alien horrors from “Want to talk?” the dark ages before the big bang become accessible to any crack-brained preacher with a I nod. “Where?” yen to talk to the devil. We thought we had a “The clubhouse . . .” few years’ grace: according to Dr. Mike our I follow him, out through a door onto the calculations are wrong, and the window began concrete balcony at the back of the New Annexe to open nine months ago.) “Something really that leads to the external fire escape. We call it bad is coming. If Kringle can’t see through to the clubhouse in jest: it’s where the smokers next December 24th, then, well, he probably hang out, exposed to the elements. There’s a won’t be alive then.” sand bucket half-submerged in scorched fag- “So he stares into the void, and the void stares ends sitting by the door. I wait while Andy back. Maybe he won’t be alive.” I’m clutching lights up. His fingers are shaking slightly, I see. at straws. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance He’s skinny, tall, about five years older than me. he’s just going to be run over by a bus?” Four grades higher, too, managing the head- Andy gives me a Look, of a kind I’ve been office side of various ops that it’s not sensible to beginning to recognize more since the business ask about. Wears a suit, watches the world from in Brookwood—infinite existential despair behind a slightly sniffy air of academic tempered with a goodly dose of rage against the amusement, as if nothing really matters very inevitable, dammed up behind a stiff upper lip. much. But his detachment is gone now, blown To be fair, I’ve been handing out a fair number away like a shred of smoke on the wind.

79 of them myself. “I have no idea. Frankly, it’s all Item: It’s the night before Christmas, and a bit vague. Precog fugues aren’t deterministic, backup is scarce to nonexistent. Bob: worse, they tend to disrupt whatever Item: You can fool everyone at an office party processes they’re predicting the outcome of. with a class three glamour, but you can’t fool a That’s why Forecasting Ops are so big on photocopier. statistical analysis. If Kringle said we won’t see another Christmas party, you can bet they’ve Item: Kringle’s prophecy. rolled the dice more than the bare minimum to Item: We’re in CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, fit the confidence interval.” and things that too many people believe in have “So preempt his prophecy already! Use the a nasty tendency to come true; magic is a branch weak anthropic principle: if we cancel next of applied computation, neural networks are year’s Christmas party, his prophecy is delayed computing devices, there are too many people indefinitely. Right?” and the stars are right (making it much too easy to gain the attention of entities that find us Andy rolls his eyes. “Don’t be fucking stupid.” crunchy and good with ketchup). “It was a long shot.” (Pause.) “What are we Item: Who or what kind of uninvited entity going to do?” might want to sit in on Kringle’s little pep talk. . “We?” Andy raises one eyebrow. “I am going to . . ? go home to the wife and kids for Christmas and I’m halfway down the corridor through try to forget about threats to our very existence Mahogany Row, and I break into a run. for a bit. You”—he takes a deep gulp of smoke —“get to play at Night Duty Officer, patrolling * * * the twilit corridors to protect our workplace “Good afternoon, everyone.” from the hideous threat of the Filler of Stockings, who oozes through chimneys and Kringle wrings his hands as he speaks; they’re ventilation ducts every Dead God’s Birthday- curiously etiolated and pale-skinned, like those eve to perform unspeakable acts against items of of a Deep One, but he lacks the hunched back or hosiery. Try not to let it get to you—oh, and gills: there’s only the pallid, stringy hair and the have a nice holiday while you’re at it.” thick horn-rimmed glasses concealing a single watery blue eye—the other is covered by a * * * leather patch—to mark him out as odd. But his My appetite for nocturnal exploration is fading, gaze . . . tempered by the realization that I may not be the “It will be a good afternoon, until I finish only one putting in some overtime in the office speaking.” He smiles like a hangman’s trapdoor tonight. I reach for my ward—hung around my opening. “So drink up now and be of good neck like an identity badge—and feel it. It cheer, because this will be the last Christmas tingles normally, and is cool. Good. If it was hot party held by the Laundry.” or glowing or throbbing I could expect company. It’s time to get back to the NDO room Up to this point most folks have been ignoring and regroup. him or listening with polite incomprehension. Suddenly, though, you could hear a mouse fart. I tiptoe back the way I came, thinking furiously.

80 “You need have no fear of downsizing or insights, but at some personal cost—” treasury cuts to comply with the revised public Eh? I shake my head again, then take another spending guidelines.” His smile fades. “I speak mouthful from my paper cup of cheap plonk. of more fundamental, irrevocable changes. The words go whizzing past, almost as if they’re “My department, Forecasting Operations, is tagged for someone else’s attention. Which is tasked with attempting to evaluate the efficacy odd, because I’m trying to follow what he’s of proposed action initiatives in pursuit of the saying: I’ve got a peculiar feeling that this stuff organization’s goals—notably, the prevention of is important. incursions by gibbering horrors from beyond “—particular, certain facts appear indisputable. space-time. Policies are originated, put on the There will be no Laundry staff Christmas dinner table—and we descry their consequences. It’s a next year. We can’t tell you why, but as a result somewhat hit-and-miss profession, but our of events that I believe have already taken place ability to peer into the abyss of the future allows this will be the last one. Indeed, attempts over us to sometimes avoid the worst pitfalls.” the past year to investigate outcomes beyond Kringle continues in this vein for some time. this evening have met with abject failure: the His voice is oddly soporific, and it takes me a end of this party is the last event that while to figure out why: he reminds me of a Forecasting Operations is able to predict with BBC radio weather forecaster. They have this any degree of confidence. . . .” slot for the weather forecast right before the * * * news, and try as I will I always zone out right before they get to whatever region I happen to I arrive back in the Duty Officer’s Room with a be interested in and wake up as they’re chilly sheen of sweat coating the small of my finishing. It’s uncanny. Kringle is clearly talking back. The light’s on, casting a cheery glow about something of considerable importance, through the frosted glass window in the door, but my mind skitters off the surface of his words and the TV’s blathering happily away. I duck like a wasp on a plate glass window. I shake my inside and shut it behind me, then grab the spare head and begin to look round, when the words wooden chair and prop it under the door handle. flicker briefly into focus. My memory of Kringle’s talk seems altogether too disturbingly like a dream for my taste: even “—Claus, or Santé Klaas in the mediaeval the conversation with Andy has an oddly Dutch usage, a friendly figure in a red suit who vaporous feel to it. I’ve had this kind of brings presents in the depths of winter, may experience before, and the only thing to do is to have a more sinister meaning. Think not only of test it. the traditions of the Norse Odin, with which the figure of Santa Claus is associated, but with the I plonk myself down behind the desk and shamanic rituals of Lap antiquity, performed by unlock the drawer, then pull out the phone book. a holy man who drank the urine of reindeer that Rain rattles on the window above my head as I had eaten the sacred toadstool, Amanita open it, an electric tingling in my fingertips Muscaria —wearing the bloody, flayed skin of reminding me that the wards on the cover are the poisoned animals to gain his insight into the very much alive. Come on, where are you . . . . I next year—we, with modern statistical filtering run a shaky finger down the page. What I’m methodologies, can gain much more precise looking for isn’t there: the dog that didn’t bark

81 in the night. I swallow, then I go back and if you cast into the void, you get a type search a different section for Andy’s home conversion error. (Which just goes to show number. Yes, he’s listed—and he’s got a secure Nietzsche wasn’t a C++ programmer.) Dr. terminal. Time check: it’s twenty to midnight, Kringle was saying his department tests new not quite late enough to be seriously antisocial. I policies, then read the future and change their pick up the telephone receiver and begin to plans in a hurry if things don’t work out for the laboriously spin the dial. The phone rings three best. Throwing scenarios into the void. times. What if there was a Forecasting Operations “Andy?” Department . . . and when they stared into the void once too often, something bad happened? “Hello? Who is this?” It’s a woman’s voice. Something so bad that they unintentionally “Er, this is Bob, from the office. I wonder, is edited themselves out of existence? Andy available? I won’t take a minute. . . .” I glance at the TV. It’s movie time, and tonight “Bob?” Andy takes the receiver. “Talk to me.” they’re running The Nightmare Before I clear my throat. “Sorry to call you like this, Christmas: Jack Skellington sings his soliloquy but it’s about the office party. The guy who as he stands before the portal he’s opened to spoke to us, from Forecasting Operations. Do Christmas Town— you remember his name, and have you ever And that’s when I realize what’s going on. dealt with him before?” * * * There’s a pause. “Forecasting Operations?” It’s Christmas Eve, and the stars are Right. Andy sounds puzzled. My stomach clenches. “Who are they? I haven’t heard of any Parents the world over still teach their children forecasting . . . what’s going on?” that if they’re good, Santa will bring them presents. “Do you remember our conversation in the clubhouse?” I ask. There are things out there in the void, hungry things hidden in the gaps between universes, “What, about personal development courses? that come when they’re called. Tonight, Can’t it wait until next year?” hundreds of millions of innocent children are I glance back at the phone book. “Uh, I’ll get calling Santa. back to you. I think I’ve got a situation.” Who’s really coming down your chimney I put the handset down very carefully, as if it’s tonight? made of sweating gelignite. Then I leaf through * * * the phone book again. Nope, Forecasting Operations aren’t listed. And Andy doesn’t It’s distinctly cold in the Duty Officer’s room. remember Dr. Kringle, or his lecture, or our Which is odd, because it’s not that cold outside: conversation on the balcony. it’s windy and raining heavily, but that’s London for you. I turn and stare at the aluminium duct- I’ve got a very bad feeling about this. work that runs from floor to ceiling. That’s the Like the famous mad philosopher said, when incinerator shaft, isn’t it? It’s coated in beads of you stare into the void, the void stares also; but condensation. I reach a hand towards it, then

82 pull my fingers back in a hurry. Cold air is * * * spilling off the pipe in chilly waves, and as I Nighttime hijinks and explorations in the office glance at the floor I see a thin mist. I left a take on a whole different significance when you nearly empty cup of tea on the desk when I went know that it’s eighteen minutes to midnight and on my nocturnal ramble: now I pick it up and —by tradition—that’s when something hungry throw the contents at the chimney. The drops of and unspeakably alien is going to break out of ice crackle as they hit the floor, and my ward is the incinerator in the basement, expecting to suddenly a burning-hot weight at the base of my find a stocking and some midnight snacks to throat. appease its voracious appetite. I’m on my feet and over the other side of the Here’s the flip side of millions of sleeping desk before I have time to think. There’s an believers-in-Santa providing an opening for anomalously cold chimney in my office. Cold something horrible to enter our cosmos: they enough that the air is condensing on it. Cold expect him to go away again after he leaves the enough that it sucks the heat out of a cup of toys. The summoning comes with an implicit tepid tea in milliseconds. But what does it ritual of banishment. But you’ve got to get the mean? (Aside from: I’m in big trouble. That’s a ritual right. If you don’t, if you break your side given, of course.) of the bargain, the other party to the summoning What it means is . . . there’s an incursion. is free to do whatever it wills. Something’s coming down the chimney, Seventeen minutes to midnight. I’m in the something from the dark anthropic zone—from admin pool again, and there’s the stationary a corner of the multiverse drained of all cupboard. It’s locked, of course, and I spend a meaning and energy. Let’s steal a facetious precious minute fumbling with the bunch of phrase from Andy and call it the Filler of keys before I find one that fits. Inside the Stockings: Lurker in Fireplaces, Bringer of cupboard I find what I’m looking for: a box of Gifts. (Odin, Jòlnir, the King in Red. Pick your pushpins. I move on, not bothering to lock it culture: prepare to die.) All it knows is that it’s behind me—if I succeed, there’ll be time to tidy cold and it’s hungry—and it wants inside. up later. These things gain energy from belief. This I bypass Mahogany Row and the sleeping office, this organization—we’re its first target ghosts of management to come, and head for the because we know it’s kind of old. If it can get a canteen. Maxine and her friends put some effort toehold anywhere, it’ll be here, but I haven’t into preparing it for the party, and if I’m lucky seen it yet, so I don’t have to believe—damn — Kringle for coming and talking to us! If I can keep it out of the New Annexe until dawn it’ll Yup, I’m in luck. Nobody’s taken the be too late for the Bringer of Gifts to claw its decorations down yet. I turn the lights on, way through the wall between the worlds, for hunting around until I see it: a red-and-white this year at least. But if it’s already in the stripy stocking stuffed with small cardboard incinerator chimney— boxes hangs from the corkboard by the dumb waiter. I grab it and dig the boxes out, nearly I pull the chair out from under the door handle, laddering it in my haste. The canteen’s bare, but grab my torch, and head out in a hurry. the kitchen is next door, and I fumble for the

83 key again, swearing under my breath (why limbs rises to stop me—my warrant card sees to aren’t these things clearly labeled?) until I get that. Forget ghostly illumination and handheld the door unlocked. The fridge is still humming. I torches—I’m not stupid, I switched on the lights get it open and find what I was hoping for—a before I came down here. Nevertheless, it’s tray of leftovers, still covered in cling-film. creepy. I’m not certain where the document incinerator lives, so I’m checking door plaques Ten minutes. I run for the staircase, clutching when I feel a cold draft of air on my hand. stocking, pin box, and the tray of stale mince Glancing up, I see a frost-rimed duct, so I pies. In my pockets: conductive marker pen, follow it until it vanishes into the wall beside a iPhone loaded with the latest Laundry door with a wired-glass window which is countermeasures package, and a few basic glowing cheerily with light from within. essentials for the jobbing computational demonologist. I’m still in time as I leg it down Looks like I’ve got company. two stories. And then I’m at the basement doors. I’m about to put my tray down and fumble with I pause briefly to review my plan. the key ring when my unseen companion saves Item: Get to the incinerator room without being me the effort and opens the door. So I raise the stopped (optionally: eaten) by the night watch. tray before me, take a step forward, and say, “just who the hell are you really?” Item: Get the stocking pinned up above the incinerator, and place the pies nearby. “Come in, Mr. Howard. I’ve been expecting you.” Item: Draw the best containment grid I can manage around the whole mess, and hope to hell The thing that calls itself Dr. Kringle takes a that it holds. step backwards into the incinerator room, beckoning. I stifle a snort of irritation. He’s What could possibly go wrong? I plant my tray taken the time to change into a cowled robe that on the floor, pull out my key ring, and unlock hides his face completely—only one skeletal the door to the basement. hand projects from a sleeve, and I can tell at a * * * glance that it’s got the wrong number of joints. I It’s funny how many of the pivotal events of my lick my lips. “You can cut the Dickensian crap, life take place underground. From the cellar of a Kringle—I’m not buying it.” secret Nazi redoubt to a crypt in the largest “But I am the ghost of Christmases probably yet necropolis in Europe, via the scuppers of an to come!” Ooh, touchy! ocean-going spy ship: seen ’em all, got the tour “Yeah, and I’m the tooth fairy. Listen, I’ve got a shirt. I’ve even visited the basement of the New stocking to put up, and not much time. You’re Annexe a time or two. But it’s different at night, the precognitive, so you tell me: is this where with the cold immanence of an approaching you try to eat my soul or try to recruit me to dead god clutching at your heart strings. your cult or something and we have to fight, or I walk down a dim, low-ceilinged passage lined are you just going to stay out of my way and let with pipes and cable bearers, past doors and me do my job?” utility cupboards and a disturbingly coffinlike “Oh, do what you will; it won’t change the ready room where the night staff wait eventual outcome.” Kringle crosses his arms impassively for intruders. No stir of undead

84 affrontedly. At least, I think they’re arms— The spectral shade in its ragged robe bobs its they’re skinny, and there are too many elbows, head—or whatever it has in place of a head. and now I notice them I realize he’s got two “The Christmas incursion—” I glance at the pairs. cold furnace again, then at my watch “—would The incinerator is a big electric furnace, with a have killed you. But without Forecasting Ops to hopper feeding into it beside a hanging rack of warn us about it, it’d happen anyway, wouldn’t sacks that normally hold the confidential it?” Three minutes. “So you had to maneuver document shreddings. I park the pie tray on top someone into position to deal with it even of the furnace (which is already cold enough though you don’t exist.” that I risk frostbite if I touch it with bare skin) I remember sitting through a bizarre and and hang the empty stocking from one of the interminable lecture at the Christmas party. But hooks on the rack. who else remembers sitting through it? Andy Ghastly hunger beyond human comprehension doesn’t remember Kringle’s talk. And I bet that is the besetting vice of extradimensional horrors aside from my own memories, and a weirdly —if they prioritized better they might actually smudged photocopy—emergent outcome of be more successful. In my experience you can some distorted electron orbitals on a samarium- pretty much bet that if J. Random Horror has coated cylinder—there’s no evidence that the just emerged after being imprisoned in an icy ghost of Christmases rendered-fictional-by- void for uncountable millennia, it’ll be feeling temporal-paradox ever visited the Laundry on a snackish. Hence the tempting tray of wet and miserable night. comestibles. So much for the emergency phone book. . . . I glance at my watch: it’s four minutes to Two minutes. “How far into the future can you midnight. Then I eyeball the furnace control see right now?” I ask Kringle. I take a step panel. Kringle is standing beside it. “So what’s forward, away from the furnace hopper. “Move the story?” I ask him. aside,” I add. “You already know most of it. Otherwise you Kringle doesn’t shift. “The future is here,” he wouldn’t be here.” He sounds bored, as well he says in a tone of such hollow, despairing dread might. “Why don’t you tell me, while we wait?” that it lifts the hair on the back of my neck. “Alright.” I point at him. “You’re here because There’s a booming, banging sound inside the you’re trapped in a time paradox. Once upon a furnace. I squint: something writhes inside the time the Laundry had a Forecasting Ops tiny, smoke-dimmed inspection window. My department. But when you play chess with the watch is slow! There’s no time left. I step close future, you risk checkmate—not to mention to the control panel and, bending down, hastily being assimilated by that which you study. The scrawl a circle on the floor around my feet. first thing Forecasting Ops ever forecast was the probability of its own catastrophic capture by— “Wait, where did the pies come from?” Kringle something. So it was disbanded. But you can’t asks. disband something like that without leaving I complete the circuit. “The kitchen. Does it echoes, can you? So you’re just an echo of a matter?” future that never happened.”

85 “But you’re doomed!” He sounds puzzled. button with rapidly numbing fingers. “There were quite a lot left over,” I tell him helpfully, Something is coming down the chimney, but it’s “after you spoiled everyone’s appetite with that not dressed in fur from its head to its feet, and it speech.” doesn’t have twinkling eyes and dimpled cheeks. “No, that can’t be—” “Nope,” I insist. I point at the bait: “And I There comes a deep hum and a rattle of intend to prove it.” ventilators, and the incinerator powers up. There follows a sizzling flash and a howling whoop of “But it ate you!” Kringle says indignantly. pain and fury as the Filler of Stockings, “Then we all died. I came to warn you, but did thwarted, tries to disentangle its appendage from you listen? Nooo—” the gas jets. To a many-angled one, we The trouble with prophecies of your own demise impoverished entities who are stranded in three- is that, like risk assessments, if you pay too plus-one dimensions are fairly harmless; much attention to them they can become self- nevertheless, even the inhabitants of flatland can fulfilling. So I ignore the turbulent time-ghost inflict a nasty paper cut upon the unwary on and stare as the fat, greenish tip of one occasion. pseudopod emerges and, twitching, quests My ward is alight, blazing like a flash bulb as it blindly towards the frozen pies on top of the sears the skin on my chest: the tentacle sticking furnace. out of the furnace hopper combusts with a flash I stare for what feels like hours, but in reality is of fire and a horrible stench of burning calamari. only a couple of seconds. Then, in a flashing Simultaneously, the shade of Dr. Kringle swirls moment, the tentacle lashes out and and spirals from view, curling into the hopper simultaneously engulfs all the pies, sucker-like even as a nacreous glow shines from inside, mouths sprouting from its integument to snap half-glimpsed things looping and writhing like closed around them. colored worms within. The howling fades into a The Filler of Stockings is clearly no exception flatulent sigh, leaving a faint ringing in my ears, to the hunger rule. Having fed, its questing as of distant church bells. I take a deep breath as tentacle slows, perhaps hampered by the bulges my ward dims, trying to get my terror-driven along its length: it lazily curls over towards the pulse back down to normal. gaping, ice-rimed mouth of the stocking. Waves There’s something on the floor. I squint and of coldness roll from it. As I draw breath it feels bend forward, puzzled. And after a moment I like I’m inhaling razor blades. The temperature see that the Filler of Stockings has left me a in the room is dropping by double-digit degrees coal. per second.

“What?” says Kringle. He sounds surprised: Copyright © 2009 by Charles Stross clearly this isn’t the future he signed up for back in time ghost central casting. “Who ate all the pies?” I twist the handle of the main circuit breaker to the LIVE position, and stab at the green ON

86 Equoid security background check at the first hurdle. (As long as the vetting officer isn’t also a PLA Charles Stross mole.) illustration by dave palumbo I hit “send” and wander out into the neon tube This novella was acquired and edited for overcast where Iris is tapping her toes. “Your Tor.com by senior editor Patrick Nielsen place or mine?” Hayden. “Mine,” says Iris, beckoning me into her “Bob! Are you busy right now? I’d like a cramped corner office. “Have a chair, Bob. moment of your time.” Something’s come up, and I think it’s right up your street.” She plants herself behind her desk, Those thirteen words never bode well— leans back in her chair, and preps her pitch. although coming from my new manager, Iris, “It’ll get you out of the office for a bit, and if they’re less doom-laden than if they were falling HR are using you to stomp all over the dreams from the lips of some others I could name. In of upwardly-mobile Chinese intelligence the two months I’ve been working for her Iris operatives it means you’re—” has turned out to be the sanest and most sensible manager I’ve had in the past five years. Which “Underutilized. Yeah, whatever.” I wave it off. is saying quite a lot, really, and I’m eager to But it’s true: since I sorted out the funny stuff in keep her happy while I’ve got her. the basement at St. Hilda’s I’ve been bored. The day-to-day occupation of the average secret “Be with you in ten minutes,” I call through the agent mostly consists of hurry up and wait. In open door of my office; “got a query from HR my case, that means filling in on annoying bits to answer first.” Human Resources have teeth, of administrative scutwork and handling here in the secretive branch of the British upgrades to the departmental network—when government known to its inmates as the I’m not being called upon to slay multi- Laundry; so when HR ask you to do their tentacled horrors from beyond spacetime. homework—ahem, provide one’s opinion of an (Which doesn’t happen very often, actually, for applicant’s suitability for a job opening—you which I am profoundly grateful.) “You said it’s give them priority over your regular work load. out of the office?” Even when it’s pretty obvious that they’re taking the piss. “Yes.” She smiles; she knows she’s planted the hook. “A bit of fresh country air, Bob—you’re I am certain that Mr. Lee would make an too pallid. But tell me—” she leans forward extremely able addition to the Office Equipment —“what do you know about horses?” Procurement Team, I type, if he was not already —according to your own goddamn database, if The equine excursion takes me by surprise. you’d bothered to check it—a lieutenant in the “Uh?” I shake my head. “Four legs, hooves, and Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Jiangshi a bad attitude?” Iris shakes her head, so I try Brigade. Who presumably filled out the again: “Go with a carriage like, er, love and shouldn’t-have-been-published-on-the-internet marriage?” job application on a drunken dare, or to test our “No, Bob, I was wondering—did you ever learn vetting procedures, or something. Consequently to ride?” I suspect that he would fail our mandatory

87 “What, you mean—wait, we’re not talking to your office and read it,” she tells me. “Return about bicycles here, right?” From her reaction I it to the stacks when you’re done. Then you can don’t think that’s the answer she was looking spend the rest of the afternoon thinking of ways for. “I’m a city boy. As the photographer said, to politely tell HR to piss up a rope, because you should never work with animals or small tomorrow morning you’re getting on a train to children if you can avoid it. What’s come up, a Hove in order to lend a DEFRA inspector a dressage emergency?” helping hand.” “Not exactly.” Her smile fades. “It’s a shame, it “You’re serious?” I boggle at her. “You’re would have made this easier.” sending me to do what? Inspect a farm?” “Made what easier?” “I don’t want to prejudice your investigation. There’s a livery stable. Just hook up with the “I could have sworn HR said you could ride.” man from The Archers, take a look around, and She stares at me pensively. “Never mind. Too phone home if anything catches your attention.” late to worry about has-beens now. Hmm. Anyway, it probably doesn’t matter—you’re She slides the file across my desk and I open the married, so I don’t suppose you’re a virgin, flyleaf. It starts with TOP SECRET and a date either. Are you?” round about the battle of the Somme, crossed out and replaced with successively lower “Get away!” Virgins? That particular myth is classifications until fifteen years ago it was associated with unicorns, which don’t exist, any marked down to MILDLY EMBARRASSING more than vampires, dragons, or mummies— NO TABLOIDS. Then I flip the page and spot although I suppose if you wrapped a zombie in the title. “Hang on—” bandages you’d get a—stop that. In my head, confused stories about Lady Godiva battle with “Shoo,” she says, a wicked glint in her eyes. media images of tweed-suited shotgun-wielding “Have fun!” farmers. “Do you need someone who can ride? I shoo, smarting. I know a set-up when I see one Because I don’t think I can learn in—” —and I’ve been conned. “No, Bob, I need you. Or rather, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs needs a liaison officer who just happens to have your To understand why I knew I’d been tricked, you background and proven track record in—” she need to know who I am and what I do. waves her left hand—“putting down Assuming you’ve read this far without your infestations.” eyeballs boiling in your skull, it’s probably safe to tell you that my name’s Bob Howard—at “Do they?” I do a double-take at putting down least, for operational purposes; true names have infestations. “Are they sure that’s what they power, and we don’t like to give need?” extradimensional identity thieves the keys to our “Yes, they are. Or rather, they know that when souls—and I work for a secret government they spot certain signs, they call us.” She pulls agency known to its inmates as the Laundry. It open a desk drawer and removes a slim folder, morphed into its present form during the Second its cover bearing the Crowned Portcullis World War, ran the occult side of the conflict emblem beneath an elder sign. “Take this back with the Thousand Year Reich, and survives to

88 this day as an annoying blob somewhere off to In my experience, your typical scenario is that the left on the org chart of the British some trespassing teenagers get stoned on intelligence services, funded out of the House of ’shrooms, hallucinate flying saucers piloted by Lords black budget. alien colorectal surgeons looking to field-test their new alien endoscope technology, and shit Magic is a branch of applied mathematics, and I themselves copiously all over Farmer Giles’ started out studying computer science (which is back paddock. A report is generated by the no more about computers than astronomy is police, and as happens with reports of unknown about building really big telescopes). These origin, it accretes additional bureaucratic days I specialize in applied computational investigatory mojo until by various pathways it demonology and general dogsbody work around lands on the desk of one of our overworked my department. The secret service has never analysts. They then bump it up the management really worked out how to deal with people like chain and/or play cubicle ping-pong with it, me, who aren’t admin personnel but didn’t come because they’re too busy working to keep tabs up through the Oxbridge civil service fast-track on the Bloody Skull Cult or cases of bovine route. In fact, I got into this line of work entirely demonic possession in Norfolk or something by accident: if your dissertation topic leads you equally important. Finally, in an attempt to in the wrong direction you’d better hope that the make the blessed thing go away, a manager Laundry finds you and makes you a job offer finds a spare human resource and details the you can’t refuse before the things you’ve poor bastard to wade through the reports, unintentionally summoned up get bored talking interview the culprits, and then tread in cow shit to you and terminate your viva voce with while probing the farm cesspool for the spoor of prejudice. alien pre-endoscopy laxatives. Nineteen times After a couple of years of death by bureaucratic out of twenty it’s an annoying paper chase snu-snu (too many committee meetings, too followed by a day spent typing up a report that many tedious IT admin jobs) I volunteered for nobody will read. One time in twenty the affair active duty, without any clear understanding that is enlivened by you falling head-first into the it would mean more years of death by boredom cesspit. And the worst part of it is knowing that (too many committee meetings, too many while you’re off on a wild goose chase so you tedious IT jobs) along with a side-order of can close the books on the report, your everyday mortal terror courtesy of tentacle monsters from workload is quietly piling up in your in-tray and beyond spacetime. overflowing onto your desk . . . As I am now older and wiser, not to mention Which is why, as I get back to my office, close married and still in possession of my sanity, I the door, light up the DO NOT DISTURB sign, prefer my work life to be boringly predictable and open the folder Iris gave me, I start to swear these days. Which it is, as a rule, but then along quietly. come the nuisance jobs—the Laundry What the hell do the love letters of that old equivalent of the way the US Secret Service fraud H. P. Lovecraft have to do with the always has to drop round for coffee, a cake, and Department for Environment, Food and Rural a brisk interrogation with idiots who boast about Affairs? shooting the president on Yahoo! Chat.

89 Dear Robert, course of many years of travel inflicted on him by the base necessity of trade—I must interject

at this juncture that I cannot stress too highly the I received your letter with, I must confess, some need to shun such distractions as commerce if trepidation, not to mention mixed feelings of one is to reach one’s full potential as a scholar hope & despair tempered by the forlorn hope by traversal of the path you propose to embark that the uncanny and unpleasant history of my upon—and the fruits of his sorrows fermented own investigations & their regrettable outcome into a heady vintage in time for my youthful will serve to dampen the ardor with which you excursions into his cellar to broach the casks of pursue your studies. I know full well to my wisdom. However, I came to recognize a bitter great & abiding dismay the compulsive truth as I assayed the dregs of his collection: my fascination that the eldritch & uncanny may kindred souls are as the dust of the church-yard. exert upon the imagination of an introspective & As with Poe so am I one with the dead, for we sensitive scholar. I cannot help but be aware that persons of rarefied spirit & talent tread but you are already cognizant of the horrible risks to seldom upon the boards of earth & are which your sanity will be exposed. What you summoned all too soon to the exit eternal. may not be aware of is the physical damage that Now, as to the qualities of the MS submitted may fall upon you pursuant to these studies. It with your latest missive for my opinion, I must took my grandfather’s life; it drove my father to thank you most kindly for granting me the seek redress by means of such vile & opportunity to review the work at this early unmentionable acts that I cannot bring myself to stage— record their nature for posterity—but suffice to say that his life was shortened thereby—and it has been grievously injurious to my own health I go home nursing a headache and a not & fitness for marriage. There, I say it baldly; but inconsiderable sense of resentment at, variously: for the blessed Sonia I might have been a mortal Iris for tricking me into this job; DEFRA for wreck for my entire life. It was only by her asking for back-up in the first place; and grace & infinite patience that I regained some Howard Phillips Lovecraft of Providence, modicum of that which is the birthright of all Rhode Island, for cultivating a florid and the sons of Adam, and though we are parted she overblown prose style that covered the entire bears my guilty secret discreetly. spectrum from purple to ultraviolet and took I confess that I was not always thus. My sixteen volumes of interminable epistles to get childhood was far from unhappy. I grew up an to the point—whatever point it was that accident-prone but happy youth, living with my constituted the meat of the EQUESTRIAN RED mother & my aunts in reduced but nevertheless SIRLOIN dossier, which point I had not yet genteel circumstances in Providence town. At ascertained despite asymptotically approaching first I studied the classics: Greek & Roman & it in the course of reading what felt like reams & Egyptian were my mother tongues, & all the volumes of the aforementioned purple prose— rhapsodies of the poetic calling were mine! My which is infectious. grandfather’s library was the orchid whose To cap it all, my fragrant wife Mo is away on nectar I sipped, sweeter by far than any wine. some sort of assignment she can’t talk about. All He had amassed a considerable archive over the

90 I know is that something’s come up in wasting too much time on over-planning. This Blackpool that requires her particular cross- one is, when all is said and done, what our section of very expensive talents, so I’m on my trans-Atlantic cousins call “a snipe hunt.” I’m own tonight. (Combat epistemologists and hoping to nail it shut—probably a little girl with violin soloists both are underpaid, but take a strap-on plastic horn for her pony—and be many years and no little innate talent to train. home in time for tea. So the next morning I Consequently, the demands on her time are leave home and head straight for London Bridge many.) So I kick back with a bottle of passable station rather than going in to the office. I fight cabernet sauvignon and a DVD—in this case, my way upstream through the onrushing stream plucked at random from the watch-this-later of suits and catch the commuter train that shelf. It turns out to be a Channel Four carried them into London on its return journey, production of Equus, by Peter Shaffer. Which I rattling and mostly empty on its run out to the am hitherto unfamiliar with (don’t laugh: my dormitory towns of East Sussex. It’s just me and background veers towards the distaff side of the the early birds taking the cheapskate stopping Two Cultures) and which really doesn’t mix service to Crapwick to avoid the hordes of well with a bottle of red wine and H. P. holiday-makers (and pickpockets) at Thiefrow. Lovecraft’s ghastly prose. So I spend half the And that’s the way I like it. night tossing and turning to visions of melting I have a name and destination in the Request for spindly-legged Dali horses with gouged eye Support memo Iris gave me: we’re to sockets—I’ve got to stop the eyeballs rolling investigate one G. Edgebaston, of Edgebaston away, for some reason—with the skin-crawling Farm Livery Stables, near Hove. But first I’m sense that something unspeakable is watching supposed to meet a Mr. Scullery at a local me from the back of the stables. This is bad DEFRA office in East Grinstead. Which is on enough that I then spend the second half of the the London to Brighton line, but it’ll take me a night sitting at the kitchen table in my pajamas, good hour of start-stop commuter rail and then a brute-forcing my way through my half of my taxi ride of indeterminate length to get there. So annual ideological self-criticism session—that I take a deep breath and dive back into the is, the self-assessed goals and objectives portion regrettably deathless prose of the Prophet of of my performance appraisal—because the Providence. crawling horrors of human resources are far less scary than the gory movie playing out behind my eyeballs. Listen, I know what you’re thinking. (This is why many of my co-workers eventually You’re probably thinking WHAT THE HELL, start taking work home—at least, the non- H. P. LOVECRAFT? And wondering why I’m classified bits. Bureaucracy is a bulwark of reading his private letters (most certainly not comforting routine in the face of the things you found in any of the collections so lovingly really don’t want to think about too hard by curated by Lovecraft scholars over the years, dead of night. Not to mention being a safer from August Derleth to S. T. Joshi), in a file so tranquilizer than drink or drugs.) mind-numbingly trivial that its leakage on the In my experience it’s best to go on-site and nail front page of a major tabloid newspaper would these bullshit jobs immediately, rather than be greeted with snores.

91 This is the Laundry, after all, and we write various hideous horrors with implausible names memos and file expense reports every day that like Shub-Niggurath, the goat of a thousand deal with gibbering horrors, things that go bump young, who spawns mindlessly on the darkest in the night, the lunatical followers of N’yar depths of the forest . . . lath-Hotep, the worshippers of the Sleeper in the . . . Whereas, in actual fact, his writings are the Pyramid, alien undersea and lithospheric occult equivalent of The Anarchist Cookbook. colonies of BLUE HADES and DEEP SIX, and Old Bat Wings himself. It’s absolutely true that Lovecraft knew stuff. Somewhere in grandpa’s library he got his You probably think HPL was one of ours, or that hands on the confused rambling inner doctrines maybe one of our predecessor agencies bumped of a dozen cults and secret societies. Most of him off, or that these letters contain Great & these secrets were arrant nonsense on stilts— Terrible Mysteries, Secrets, & Eldritch Wisdom admixed with just enough knowledge to be of the Ancients and must be handled with deadly dangerous. Occultists of old, like the asbestos tongs while reading them through alchemists who poisoned themselves with welders’ goggles. Right? mercury in their enthusiasm to transform lead Well, you would be wrong. Although it’s not into gold (meanwhile missing the opportunity to your fault. You’d be wrong for the same reason invent the modern discipline of chemistry as we as the folks who think modern fly-by-wire understand it), didn’t know much. What they airliners can fly themselves from takeoff to did know was mostly just enough to guarantee a landing (who needs pilots?), that Saddam really slow, lingering death from Krantzberg did have weapons of mass destruction (we just Syndrome (if the Eaters in Night didn’t get them didn’t search hard enough), and that the Filler of first). Not to mention the fact that the vain Stockings who brings presents down the exhibitionists who compiled these tomes and chimney every Newtonmas-eve is a benign and grimoires, strung out between the narcissistic cheery fellow. You’ve been listening to the self- urge to self-exposure and their occupational aggrandizing exaggerations of self-promotion addiction to secrecy, littered their scribbled artists: respectively, the PR might of the airliner recipes with booby traps on purpose, just to fuck manufacturers, dodgy politicians, and the with unauthorized imitators and prove how ’leet greeting card industry. they were for being able to actually make this junk work without melting their own faces. And so it is with old HPL: the very model of an 18th century hipster, born decades too late to be But the young idiot savant HPL was unaware of one of the original louche laudanum-addicted the social context of 18th century occultist romantic poets, and utterly unafraid to bore us fandom. So he naively distilled their methanol- by droning on and on about the essential contaminated moonshine and nonsense into a crapness of culture since Edgar Allan Poe, the heady brew that makes you go blind and then degeneracy of the modern age, &c. &c. &c. causes your extremities to rot if you actually try to drink it. It’s almost as if he mistook his His reputation has been vastly inflated—out of grandfather’s library for a harmless source of all proportion—by his followers, who think he material for fiction, rather than the demented is the one true wellspring of wisdom concerning and dangerous documentation of our the Elder Gods, the Stars Coming Right, and

92 superstitious forerunners. by a pair of mounted police officers who are exercising their gigantic cavalry chargers The Anarchist Cookbook, with its dangerously outside the station in preparation for crowd flawed bomb formulae, hasn’t maimed half so control at the next sudden-death derby many hands as HPL’s mythos. His writings look (Brighton Wanderers v. Bexhill United, or some more like fiction than allegorically-described such), and hail a taxi. A minute’s muttered recipes to most people, which is a good thing; negotiation with the driver ensues, then I’m off but every so often a reader of his more recondite to the office. works becomes unhealthily obsessed with the idea of the starry wisdom behind it, starts When we arrive, I’m half-convinced I’ve got the thinking of it as something real, and then tries to wrong address. It’s way the hell up the A22, so reverse-engineer the design of the pipe bomb far out of town that at first I’m wondering why I he’s describing, not realizing that Quality got off the train in East Grinstead—but no, Control was not his strong point. that’s what Google said. (Not for the first time I wish I had a car, though as I live in London on a There are bits of the True Knowledge scattered civil service salary it’s not a terribly practical throughout HPL’s oeuvre like corn kernels in a wish.) The taxi drops me in the middle of turd. But he left stuff out, and he added stuff in, nowhere, next to a driveway fronted by a thick and he embellished and added baroque twiddles hedgerow. There are no obvious offices here, and stylistic curlicues as only H. P. Lovecraft much less the sort of slightly flyblown could, until it’s pretty much the safest course to agricultural veterinary premises you’d expect discount everything he talks about—like Old the Animal Health Executive Agency to Bat-Wings himself, Dread Cthulhu, who dead maintain. So I look around, at a loss for a but dreaming sleeps in Drowned R’lyeh beneath minute until I notice the discreet sign pointing the southern ocean. up the drive to the Equine Veterinary Practice. Watch my lips: Cthulhu does not exist! And I amble into the yard of what looks like a former there is no tooth fairy. farmhouse. It’s been inexpertly fronted with a (Santa Claus is another matter; but that, as they conservatory that houses a rather dingy say, is a file with a different code word . . .) reception area, complete with a bored-looking middle-aged lady tapping away on her computer while wearing an expression that says if it’s East Grinstead is buried deep in the heart of the MySpace, she’s just been unfriended by the Sussex commuter belt: this is Ruralshire, nor are universe. we out of it. It’s an overgrown village or a stunted town, depending on how you look at it, “Hello,” I ask her. She ignores me, intently complete with picturesque mediaeval timbered tapping away at whatever so preoccupies her on buildings, although these days it’s mostly her computer. “Hello?” I repeat again. “I’m here known for its weirdly large array of fringe to meet Mr. Scullery? Is he around?” churches. I stumble blinking from the railway Finally she deigns to notice me. “He’s on a job station (which is deathly quiet at this time of for the Department,” she says. “He won’t be day, but clearly rebuilt to accommodate rush available until Thursday—” hour throngs), narrowly avoid being run down I let her see my teeth: “Perhaps you can tell him

93 that Mr. Howard is here to see him? From the justify my equivocation, I would like to enter in office in London. I assume it’s the same job my defense a plea of temporary insanity. Your we’re talking about.” confabulation, while a most excellent evocation of a legendary monster, bears special & most “He’s on a job for the—” Finally what I just unpleasant personal resonances from my said worms its way through her ears and into her regrettable youth. It is not your fault that the brain—“I’m sorry, who did you say you were?” heraldic beast you chose to depict in this form is “I’m Mr. Howard. I’ve come all the way down a marvelous horror in my eyes; indeed, you from London. About the Edgebaston brief.” I must be somewhat puzzled by my reaction. bounce up and down on my toes. “He asked for I regret to inform you that your description of me, so if you’d just like to—” the unicorn, while vivid in its adhesion to the She is already reaching for the phone. “Hello? classical description of same & sharply piquant Mr. Scullery? I have a Mr. Howarth from in depicting his pursuit of the gamine subject of London, he says you asked for someone from the narrative, is fundamentally inaccurate in London to help with Edgebaston Farm? Is that both broad outline & fine detail. Explorers right? Yes—right you are, I’ll just tell him.” She might once have sketched fanciful depictions of puts the phone down and smiles at me in that the Chinese Panda, but today we are fettered by very precise, slightly self-deprecating way farm- the dour tyranny of camera & zoo; to diverge so bred ladies of a certain class use to let you know drastically from the established order of nature that there’s nothing personal about the knee cap is to risk the gentle reader’s willing suspension they’re about to deliver to your left nut: “Mr. of disbelief. Regrettably, the horrid creature you Scullery says he’s running half an hour late and caricature is all too real; it will in due course be he’ll be with you as soon as he can. So if you’d a matter of the most mundane familiarity to like to take a seat in the waiting area? I’m sure readers, & familiarity inevitably brings such he won’t be long.” She turns back to her enthusiastic flights of fancy as your missive to computer as if I’m invisible. I hover grief on the cold stone flags of reality. indecisively for a moment, but I know when Please extend me your trust on this matter. I’ve been dismissed; and so I go and find a Unicorns are not a suitable topic for romance or waiting room seat to occupy (sub-type: wooden, fantasy. On the contrary, the adult unicorn is a elderly, not designed with human buttocks in thing of dire & eldritch horror & I would advise mind) and mooch listlessly through the stack of you to pray to your creator that you live to a ripe magazines for space aliens that they keep on old age without once encountering such a hand to distract the terminally bored. monstrous creature.

I, alas, was not so lucky & the experience has Dear Robert, blighted my entire adult life . . .

I must confess that, pursuant to my reply to your I kill time waiting for the Man from Ag and Fish last missive, I experienced no small degree of by working my way through a stack of glossy self-doubt as to the perspicacity & pertinence of magazines for aliens. Passing over the princess- my critique. If you will permit me to attempt to shiny pinkness of Unicorn School™: The

94 Sparkling with a shudder, I work my way open in front of him. through a thought-provoking if slightly The walnut-crusher shifts gear into a final grind- breathless memoir of “Police Cavalry v. Pinko into-mush setting: “Capital Laundry Services? Commie Striking Miners in the 1980s”—the Oh yes indeedy! I was in the Rifles, you know. thoughts it provoke focus on the urgent need to Back in my misspent childhood, haha.” The commit the author to an asylum for the violently walnut slurry is ejected: my right hand dangles insane—and am partway through reading a limply and I try not to wince conspicuously. feature about modern trends in castration “Jolly good, Mr. Howard. So. Have you been techniques (and how to care for your gelding) in briefed?” Stallion World when the door slams open and a gigantic beard wearing a loud tweed suit I shake my head, just as the bell above the explodes into the reception area: “Lissa! reception area door jangles. A young filly is Melissa! I’m back! Can you tell Bert to hose out leading her mater in. They’re both wearing the back of the Landy? And fetch out the two green wellies, and there’s something so sacks of oats behind the passenger seat! Where’s indefinably horsey about them that I have to this man from the ministry? Ah, there you are! pinch myself and remember that were-ponies do You must be Mr. Helmuth! I’m Greg Scullery. not exist outside the pages of a certain Pleased to meet you!” bestselling kid-lit series. “Is there somewhere we can talk about this in private?” I ask Greg. He bounds across the reception area before I can “My manager said she didn’t want to prejudice put the magazine down and grabs my right me by actually telling me what this is about.” hand, pumping it like a windlass while I’m still coming to my feet. Mr. Scullery is wiry and of His beard twitches indignantly while it sorts out indeterminate middle age. He could probably an answer. “One of those, eh? We’ll see about pass for a farmer with bizarre (albeit dated) that!” He turns towards reception, where Jocasta sartorial taste—ghastly green tweed suit, check or Penelope is trying to evince a metabolic shirt, a tie that appears to be knitted from the reaction from Melissa the receptionist, who is intestines of long-dead badgers—but his beard still deep in MySpace meltdown. “Lissa! Belay is about thirty centimeters long, grizzled and all that, I’m going out on a job with Mr. Howard salted and bifurcated. It has so much character here! If Fiona calls, tell her I’ll be back by five! that it’s probably being hunted by a posse of Follow me.” And with that, he strides back out typographers. “Um, the name’s Howard. Bob into the farmyard. I swirl along in the undertow, Howard.” I try not to wince at the sensation in wondering what I’ve let myself in for. my hand, which feels as if it has been sucked Greg leads me across the yard to a Land Rover. into some kind of machine for extracting oil I don’t know a lot about cars, but this one is from walnuts. “I believe you requested backup? pretty spartan, from the bare metal floor pan For some sort of infestation?” punctured by drain holes, to the snorkel-shaped “Yes! Yes indeed!” I remember my other hand exhaust bolted to one side of the windscreen. and use it to make a grab for my warrant card, It’s drab green, there’s a gigantic spare tire because I have not yet had an opportunity to clamped on the bonnet, and I wouldn’t be authenticate him. surprised to hear it has an army service record longer than Greg’s. That worthy clambers into “Seen one of these before?” I ask, flicking it

95 the driver’s seat and motions me towards the memories I commit to paper. In the summer of passenger door. “Yes, we have seat belts! And 1904 I was a callow & untempered fourteen- other modern fittings like air conditioning” (he year-old, with a head full of poetry & a muse at points at a slotted metal grille under the either shoulder, attending Hope High School & windscreen), “and radio” (he gestures at a keenly absorbing the wisdom of my elders. That military-looking shortwave set bolted to the cab younger Howard was a sickly lad, but curious & roof), “even though it’s a pre-1983 Mark III keen, & took a most serious interest in matters model. Just hang on, eh?” He fires up the astronomical & chymical. He was at heart an engine, which grumbles and mutters to itself as optimist, despite the death of his father from if chewing on lumps of coal, before it emits a nervous exhaustion some years previously, & villainous blue smoke ring as a prelude to was gifted with the love of his mother & aunts turning over under its own power. Then he rams & grandfather. Oh! The heart sickens with the it into gear with a jolt, and we lurch towards the dreadful knowledge of the horrid fate which main road. I’m certain that the rubber band this came to blight my life & prospects thereafter. thing uses in lieu of a leaf spring profoundly The death of my grandfather in that summer regrets how very, very wicked it was in an cast a pall across my life, for our circumstances earlier life. And shortly thereafter, so do my were much reduced, & my mother & aunts were buttocks. obliged to move to the house on Angell Street. I continued my studies & became particularly

obsessed with the sky & stars, for it seemed to Dear Robert, me that in the vastness of the cosmos lay the truest & purest object of study. It was my ambition to become an astronomer & to that end Many thanks for your kind enquiry after my I bent my will. health. I am, as is usually the case, in somewhat precarious straits but no better or worse than is There were distractions, of course. Of these, one to be expected of a gentleman of refined & of the most charming lived in a house on delicate breeding in this coarsened & debased Waterman Street with her family & was by them age. My digestion is troubling me greatly, but I named Hester, or Hetty. She attended Hope fear there is nothing to be done about that. I High, & I confess she was the brightest star in have the comfort of my memories, & that is my firmament by 1908. Not that I found it easy both necessary & sufficient to the day, however then or now to speak of this to her, or to her questionable such comfort might be. I am in any shade, for she is as long dead as the first flush of event weighed down by an apprehension of my a young man’s love by middle age, & the own mortality. The sands of my hourglass are apprehension of the creeping chill of the open running fast & I have no great expectation of a grave that waits for me is all that can drive me lengthy future stretching before me; so I hope to set my hand to write of my feelings in this you will indulge this old raconteur’s discursive manner. Far too many of the things I should perambulations & allow me to tell you what I have said to her (had I been mature enough to know of unicorns. apprehend how serious an undertaking courtship must be) I whispered instead to my journal, I should preface my remarks by cautioning you disguised in the raiments of metaphor & verse. that I am no longer the young man whose

96 Let me then speak plainly, as befits these chilly Mr. Scullery strides into the public bar (which is January days of 1937. Hetty was, Hetty was, as countrified as I expected: blackened timber like myself, the only child of an old Dutch beams held together by a collection of mirror- lineage. A year younger than I, she brought a polished horse brasses, a truly vile carpet, and luminous self-confidence to all that she did, chairs at tables set for food rather than serious from piano to poetry. I watched from a distance, drinking). “Brenda? Brenda! Ah, capital! That’ll smitten with admiration for this delicate & be two IPAs, the sausages and cheddar mash for clever creature. I imagined a life in literature, me, and whatever Mr. Howard here is eating—” with her Virginia playing the muse to my Edgar I scan the menu hastily. “I’ll have the & fancifully imagined that she might see in me cheeseburger, please,” I say. some echoing spark of recognition of our shared destiny together. In hindsight my obsession was “We’ll be in the garden,” the beard announces, jejune & juvenile, the youthful obsession of a its points quivering in anticipation. And then young man in whose sinews and fibers the sap is he’s off again, launching himself like a rising for the first time; but it was sincerely felt cannonball through a side door (half-glazed & as passionate as anything I had experienced at with tiny panes of warped glass thick enough to that time. screen a public toilet), into a grassy back yard studded with outdoor tables, their wooden That was a simpler, more innocent age and there surfaces weathered silver-grey from long were scant opportunities for a youth such as I to exposure. “Jolly good!” he declares, parking his directly address his muse, much less to plight backside on a bench seat with a good view of his troth before the altar of providence & both the parking lot and the back door (and announce the depth of his ardor. It was simply anyone else who ventures out this way). not done. You may therefore imagine my “Brenda will have our drinks along in a minute, surprise when, one stifling August Saturday and then we shall have a bite of lunch. So tell afternoon, whilst engaged in my perambulations me, Mr. Howard. What did your boss tell you?” about the paths and churchyards of Providence, I encountered the object of my fascination “That you work for DEFRA and you know crouching behind a gravestone, to all about us and you’re cleared to request backup appearances preoccupied by an abnormally from my department.” I shrug. “When I said she large & singular snail . . . doesn’t believe in prejudicing her staff I meant it. All I know is that I’m supposed to meet you

and we’re going to go and investigate a livery My tailbone is aching by the time Greg stable called, um, G. Edgebaston Ltd. What’s screeches to a halt outside a rustic-looking pub. your job, normally? I mean, to have clearance “Lunch time!” He declares, with considerable —” lip-smacking; “I assume you haven’t been “I work for DEFRA in—” He pauses as a swallowing the swill the railway trolley service middle-aged lady bustles up to us with a tray sells? They serve a passable pint of Greene King supporting two nearly full beer glasses and IPA here, and there’s a beer garden.” The beard some slops. “Thank you, Brenda!” twitches skywards, as if reading the clouds for auguries of rain: “We’ll probably be alone “Your food will be along in ten minutes, Mr. outside, which is good.” Scullery,” she says with an oddly proprietorial

97 tone; “don’t you be overdoing it now!” Then she “But I thought—” I pause. “Hang on, you’re retreats, leaving us alone once more. telling me that unicorns are real?” “Ah, where was I? Ah yes. I work for the He pauses for a few seconds, then wets his Animal Health Agency.” The beard twitches whistle before he speaks. “I’ve never seen one” over its beer for a moment, dowsing for he says quietly, “for which I am profoundly drowned wasps. “I’m a veterinary surgeon. I grateful because, being male, if I did see one specialize in horses, but I do other stuff. It’s a it’d probably be the last thing I ever set eyes on. hobby, if you like, but it’s official enough that But I do assure you, young feller me lad, that I’m on the books as AHA’s in-house unicorns are very real indeed, just like great cryptozoologist. What about you, Mr. Howard? white sharks and Ebola Zaire—and they’re just What exactly do you do for the Laundry?” as much of a joking matter. Napalm, Mr. Howard, napalm and scorched earth: that’s the I am too busy trying not to choke on my beer to only language they understand. Sterilize it with answer for a moment. “I don’t think I’m fire and nerve gas, then station armed guards.” allowed to talk about that,” I finally manage. Another mouthful of beer vanishes, clearly (My oath of office doesn’t zap me for this destined to fuel the growth of further facial admission.) foliage and calm Mr. Scullery’s shaky nerves. “Yes, but really, I say. What do you know about I shake my head. The EQUESTRIAN RED cryptozoology?” SIRLOIN dossier was suggestive, but it’s “Well.” I think for a moment. “I used to always hard to tell where HPL’s starry wisdom subscribe to Fortean Times, but then I ends and his barking fantasy starts. “Okay, so developed an allergy to things with too many you want backup when you go to run a spot tentacles . . .” check on Edgebaston’s stable. Why me? Why “Bah.” Greg couldn’t telegraph his disdain more not a full team of door-breakers, and a flame clearly if he manifested a tiny thundercloud over thrower for good luck?” his head, complete with lightning bolts. “Rank “They’ve got connections, Mr. Howard. Bob, amateurs, conspiracy theorists and journalists.” isn’t it? The Edgebastons have run Edgebaston He takes a mouthful of the Greene King, Farm out at Howling ever since Harry filtering it on its way down his throat. “No, Mr. Edgebaston married Dick and Elfine’s daughter Howard, I don’t deal with nonsense like Bigfoot Sandra Hawk-Monitor, and renamed the old or little grey aliens with rectal thermometers or farm after his own line—and wasn’t that a chupacabra: I deal with real organisms, which scandal, most of a century ago!—but in this simply happen to be rare.” generation they’re pillars of the local “Unicorns?” I guess wildly. community, not to mention the Conservative Club. Suppliers of horses to Sussex Greg peers at me over the rim of his pint glass, Constabulary, first cousins of our MP, Barry one eye open wide. “Don’t say that,” he hisses. Starkadder. You do not want to mess with the “Do you have any idea what we’d have to do if squirearchy, even in this day and age of Euro- there was a unicorn outbreak in England? It’d regulation and what-not. They’ll call down fire make the last foot and mouth epidemic look like and brimstone! And not just from the Church in a storm in a tea-cup . . .” Beershorn, I’m telling you. Questions will be

98 asked in Parliament if I go banging on their you’ve got?” I push. front door without good reason, you mark my “No,” Greg says tightly, and reaches into his words!” pocket, pulls something out, and puts it on the “But—” I stop and rewind, rephrasing: table in front of me. It’s the shell of a cone snail, “something must have raised your suspicions, fluted and spiraled, about ten centimeters long Mr. Scullery. Isn’t that right? What makes you and two centimeters in diameter at its open end, think there’s an outbreak down at Edgebaston gorgeously marbled in cream and brown. It’s Farm?” clearly dead. Which is a very good thing, because if it were a live cone snail and Greg had “I have a pricking in my thumbs and an itching picked it up like that it would have stung him, in my nostril.” The beard twitches grimly. “Oh and those bastards are nearly as lethal as a king yes indeed. But you asked the right question! cobra. It’s the butcher bills, Mr. Howard, that got my attention this past month. See, old George has “Very nice,” I say faintly. “Where did you find been buying in bulk from old Murther’s butcher, it?” lots of honeycomb and giblets and offal. Pigs’ “On the verge of the road, under the fence at the knuckles. That sort of thing. Wanda’s happy side of the back field under Mockuncle Hill.” enough to tell me what the Edgebastons are The beard clenches, wrapping itself around a buying—without me leaning too hard, anyway nasty grin. “It was alive at the time. Eating what —and it turns out they’re taking about forty was left of a lamb. Took a lot of killin’.” kilos a day.” “But it’s a—” I stop. I swallow, then realize I’ve “So they’re buying lots of meat? Is that all?” I got a pint of beer, and my dry throat really think for a moment. “Are they selling pies to needs some lubrication. “It could be a Poland or something?” coincidence,” I say, trying to convince myself “It’s not food-grade for people, Mr. Howard. Or and failing. livestock for that matter, not since our little “Do you really think that?” Greg knots his problem with BSE twenty years ago.” Greg fingers through his beard and tugs, combing it raises his glass and empties it down his throat. crudely. “And it’s a blessed lot of meat. Enough to feed a tiger, or a pack of hounds, ’cept Georgie doesn’t “Fuck, no.” I somehow manage to make half a ride with the Howling Hounds any more. Had a pint of beer disappear between sentences. falling-out with Debbie Checkbottom six years “You’re going to have to check it out. No ago and that was the end of that—it’s the talk of question. In case there are females.” the village, that and Gareth Grissom wearing a “No, Mr. Howard.” He’s abruptly as serious as a dress and saying he wants a sex change, then heart-attack. “We are going to have to check it taking off to Brighton.” He says it with relish, out. Because if there’s a live female, much less a and I try not to roll my eyes or pass comment on mated pair, two of us stand a better chance of his parochial lack of savoir faire. This is rural living long enough to sound the alarm than one . England, after all; please set your watch back . .” thirty years . . .

“Okay, so: meat. And a livery stable. Is that all

99 (cont’d.) on his own, too far from home. There are no missy-horses here, & so he will surely starve & Having for so long been tongue-tied in her die unfulfilled.” presence, I was finally shocked out of my diffidence when I saw the object of Hetty’s “How do you know this?” I asked stupidly, interest. “I say, what is that?” I ejaculated. confounded by her vivacity & veneer of wisdom in the matter of this desperate gastropod. My rosy-cheeked Dawn turned her face towards me & smiled like a goddess out of legend: “It is “I have a mummy-horse quartered in our a daddy-snail!” she exclaimed. She reached stables,” she told me, as matter-of-fact as can towards a funerary urn wherein languished a be, with an impatient toss of her golden locks. bouquet of wilted lilies & plucked a browning “Would you help me carry Peter back to the stem from the funereal decoration—she was in yard? I would be ever so grateful, & he would truth poetry in motion. “Watch this,” she love to be among his kindred.” commanded. My eyes turned to follow her “Why don’t you do it yourself?” I asked rudely, gesture as she gracefully prodded the lichen- then kicked myself. Her speech and direct crusted rock before the snail’s face. The shell of manner had quite confounded me, being as it the snail was a fluted cone, perhaps eight inches was so utterly at odds with my imaginings of long & two inches in diameter at the open end. her lilting voice & ladylike gentility. (I was a Its color was that of antique ivory, piebald with young and dreamy boy in those days & so ill- attractive glossy brown spots. I could see acquainted with females as to picture them from nothing of the occupant & indeed it could have afar as abstractions of femininity. It was a been a dead sea-shell of considerable size, but gentler & more innocent age &c., & I was a when the lily-stem brushed the gravestone an creature of that time.) inch or two in front of it there was an excitement of motion: the cone rocked back on “I would, but I’m afraid he’d sting me,” she its heel & spat a pair of slippery iridescent said. “The sting of a daddy-snail is mortal harsh, tongues forth at the stem. With some disbelief I so ’tis said.” confess to recognizing these as tentacles, as “Really?” I leaned closer to see this prodigy for unlike the foot of the common mollusk as can myself. “Who says?” be (although our friends the marine biologists assert that the cephalopodia, the octopi & squid “Those families as raise the virgin missy-horses & chambered nautilus, are themselves but the to ride or hunt,” she replied. “Will you help highest form of invertebrate mollusk, so perhaps me?” She asked with imploring eyes & attributing ownership of tentacles to a land-snail prayerful hands, to such effect as only a is not such an incongruous stretch of thirteen-year-old girl can have on the heart- imagination as one might at first consider); but strings of a pigeon-chested boy of fourteen who while I was trying to make sense of my own has been watching her from afar and is eager to eyes’ vision, the demonic cone grabbed hold of impress. the parched stem of the flower and broke it in “Certainly I shall help!” I agreed, nodding two! violently. “But because it stings, I must take “Do you see?” Hetty beamed at me. “It is a precautions. Would you wait here and stand daddy-snail!” Then her dear face fell. “But he is vigilant watch over our escaped prisoner? I shall

100 have to fetch suitable tools with which to fetter Hetty said coyly, producing a key to the padlock the suspect while we escort him back to jail.” that secured the gate. “Bring Peter with you!” She nodded her leave & I departed in haste, She opened the gate & nipped inside the yard. I rushing up the lane towards home to borrow followed, barely noticing as she secured the certain appurtenances from our own out- portal behind me with hasp & cunning padlock. building. I fetched heavy gloves & fireplace “Come to the stable,” she sang, dancing across tongs, the better with which to grasp a snake- the cobbles despite the pervasive miasma of tongued tentacular horror; and looking-glass, decay that hung heavy over the yard like the paper, & pencils with which to record it. Then I fetid caul of loathsome exudate that hovers rushed back to the graveyard & arrived quite out above the body of a week-dead whale bloating of breath to find Hetty waiting complaisantly in Nantucket sound during the summer months. near our target, who had moved perhaps a foot “Let me show you my darling, my one true in the intervening quarter-hour. love!” As she said it, the cone in my tongs gave a quiver, as of rage—or mortal terror. As it did I wasted no time at all in plucking the so I gagged at the stench inside the yard, & my blasphemous mollusk from its stony plinth with grip loosened inadvertently. The snail-thing tongs and gloves. As I lifted it, the creature gave another ferocious jerk, then slipped free! It stabbed out with a sharp red spike which caught the end of my tongs with one sucker- protruded from the point of its shell: I was tipped tentacle, uncoiled to lower itself to the heartily glad for my foresight. “Where do you decaying straw-strewn cobbles below, then let want me to take it?” I asked my muse. I gave go before I could respond. Hetty gave a little the cone a sharp shake & the red spike retracted, shriek of dismay: “Oh, the poor little man! Now sullen at being foiled. the others will eat him alive!” Hetty clapped delightedly. “Follow me!” she For what happened next I can only cite my sang, & skipped away between the gravestones. callow youth & inexperience in exculpation. I Of course I knew the front of her parents’ house panicked a little, tightening my grip on my tool on Waterman Street, but I felt it unwise to show as the deadly giant snail turned around as if any sign of this. I allowed Hetty to lead me assessing the arena in which it found itself. I through the boneyard & along a grassy path took a step backwards. “What is going on?” I between ancient drystone walls to the alley demanded. abutting the back of her family home. There was The singular snail reared, point uppermost, as if a tall wooden gate, and beyond it a yard and tasting the sour & dreadful air. A host of small stables. I was preoccupied with carrying the tentacles appeared around its open end, and it cone-shell at arm’s length, for its homicidal rage began to haul itself on suckers across the decay- had not escaped my attention. Periodically it slicked stones, proceeding in the direction of the shivered & shuddered, like a pot close to boiling stable doors & the darkness that I could even over. Being thus distracted I perhaps paid then sense lurking within. insufficient attention to the warning signs: the flies, the evident lack of labour applied to Hetty smiled—a horrid, knowing expression, cleaning the back stoop, & above all the sickly- unfit to grace the visage of a member of the sweet smell of rotting meat. “Come inside,” fairer sex. “The daddy-snails and the missy-

101 horses dance together & dine, and those that I gather. My informant in this matter is Greg survive join in matrimonial union to become a Scullery, and the nature of the difference is a mummy-horse,” she intoned in a sing-song way, leisurely lunch at a country pub in place of a as if reciting a nursery rhyme plucked from the hasty sandwich break snatched at one’s office cradles of hell. “My mummy-horse rests desk in Central London. yonder,” she said, gesturing at the decaying I am initially worried about Greg’s willingness stable doors, slicked with nameless dark fluids to down a pint before lunch, but by the time our that had been allowed to dry, staining the wood. food arrives and we’ve cleaned our plates my “Would you like to see my mummy?” worries evaporate—assisted by Greg’s smooth I felt faint, for I knew even then that something transition onto lemonade and soda, albeit terrible born of an unfathomable madness had replaced by new worries about what we’re happened here. Heartbroken—for there is no going to find down on Edgebaston farm. heartbreak like that of a fourteen-year-old lad Because Greg has got that disturbing snail-shell, whose muse reveals feet not of clay but of and with the fresh context provided by the excrement—I nevertheless gathered my courage Lovecraftian confessional in the EQUESTRIAN and stood my ground. “Your mummy,” I said. RED SIRLOIN dossier, I’m going to have a “You do not speak of Mrs. van t’Hooft, in this hard time sleeping tonight unless I successfully case?” lay that particular ghost to rest. She shook her head. “My mother—” she “It’s not a horse, let’s get that straight,” Greg pronounced the word strangely—“is sleeping in explains between bites of a disturbingly phallic the stable with mummy-horse. Would you like sausage. “It’s not Equus ferus caballus. It might to see her?” A horrid glow of anticipation crept look like one at certain points in its life cycle, into her cheeks, as if she could barely conceal but that’s simple mimicry. Not Batesian her eagerness to cozen me within. mimicry, where a harmless organism imitates a toxic or venomous one to deter predators, much I wound up the reins of my bravery to the as hoverflies mimic the thoracic coloration of breaking-point & tightened my grip on the fire- wasps, but rather the kind of mimicry a bolas tongs. They felt flimsy & intangible in my spider uses to lure its prey—using pheromonal grasp: oh for the shield and sword of a Knight lures and appearance to make itself attractive to of the Round Table! My kingdom for a charger its next meal. It’s an equoid not an equus, in & a lance, or even the cleansing flare of a other words.” dragon’s hot breath! “Show me to your mummy-horse,” I told Hetty, thinking myself I suppress a shudder. “How do you tell a female brave & manly & willing to face down monsters unic—equoid—from a real horse?” I ask. for a young man’s apprehension of love: “Come along to Edgebaston Farm and I’m sure thinking that whatever this monster was, I I’ll be able to show you,” he says, setting aside should have the better of it. the plate holding what’s left of his bangers and More fool I! mash as he rises to his feet. “Have you read the backgrounder I sent your people? Or the

infestation control protocol?” They do things differently in East Sussex, or so “All I’ve read is H. P. Lovecraft’s deathbed

102 confession,” I admit. clinging to the grab bar for dear life as Greg shoves the Landy into gear and we bounce “His—” Greg stops dead in his tracks across ruts and into the road. “Do you have any —“really?” idea of the layout of Edgebaston Farm? Because “His first flame, Hetty van t’Hooft, introduced I don’t!” him to, well, he called it a unicorn. That was “It’s jolly simple, Mr. Howard sir.” (Oh great, right before his nervous breakdown.” I shake now he’s reverting to grizzled-veteran-sergeant- my head. “Although how much stock to place in briefing-the-young-lieutenant mode.) his account . . .” “Edgebaston Farm covers two hundred acres on “Fascinating,” Greg hisses between his teeth. “I a hillside overlooking Howling, but the farm bet he didn’t mention napalm, did he?” I shake itself—the stables and outhouses—are in the my head. “Typical of your effete word-pusher, shape of an octangle surrounding the farmhouse, then, not practical. But we can’t just call in an which is a long triangle two stories high. The air strike either, these days, can we? And it’ll left point of the triangle, the kitchen, intersects take rather a lot of pull to convince the police to the cowsheds which lie parallel to the barn, take this seriously. So let’s go and beard which is your target. They’re all built from Georgina in her den and see what she’s hiding.” rough-hewn stone and thatched: no new-fangled I follow Greg through the pub and back to his solar panels here. It started out as a shed where Land Rover. “Are we just going to go in there Edward the Sixth housed his swineherds . . .” and talk to her?” I ask. “Because I thought uni “Yes, Greg, but what do I do if there’s a fucking —equoids—are a bit on the dangerous side? In unicorn in the barn?” terms of how they co-opt their host, I mean. If “You run away very quickly, Bob. Or you die.” she’s got a shotgun . . .” He glances at me pityingly in the rearview “Don’t you worry about Georgina, young feller mirror. (The Landy is sufficiently spartan that me lad,” Greg reassures me. “Of course she’s the reflector is an after-market bolt-on, with that got a shotgun! But she won’t use it on us. The imported American warning: objects in mirror trick is to not look like we’re a threat to her are closer than they appear.) “Isn’t that part of Precious, if she is indeed playing host to a your job description? Screaming and running fertile equoid. If we’re lucky and she isn’t under away?” its spell things will go much more smoothly. So I am extremely dubious about my ability to we’re not going to mention the blessed thing at outrun an equoid. “Uh-huh. The only kind of first. Remember she runs a farm? I’m just running I generally do is batch jobs on a dropping in to check her hounds’ vaccination mainframe.” I clutch my briefcase protectively. records are up to date. While I’m doing that, “What we really need is a pretext to see what you go and take a peek behind the stable doors they’re keeping in the stables, one that won’t get with that phone camera of yours: then we’ll put us killed if you’re right about what’s lurking in our heads together. Piece of cake!” he adds the background.” I pause for a moment. confidently, as he pushes the ignition button and “They’re a livery stable, aren’t they? Do they do his chariot belches blue smoke. riding lessons?” “Right.” You have got to be kidding, I think, Greg nearly drives off the road. “Of course they

103 do!” His beard emits an erratic hissing noise fictions I have named Shub-Niggurath, the like a pressure cooker that’s gearing up for a spawning goat of a thousand young, a stove-top meltdown. After a moment I recognize shuddering pile of protoplasmic horror that it as something not unlike laughter. Eventually mindlessly copulates with itself and, spurting, the snickering stops. “And if they’re harboring squirting, licking its own engorged & swollen equoids they won’t be able to offer you a horse. membrum & vulvae, inseminates with sucker- But won’t that take too long?” adorned tentacles (each cup enfolding the horror of a barbed, venomous hook with which to tear “It had better not.” I take a deep breath. “Okay, the flesh to which it adhered) the inflamed Greg. Here’s our story: you’re checking the orifices & lubricious, pulsing cysts from which dogs, and I’m your nephew from London. I’m the abnormal spawn gushes in ropy streams of working in Hastings for a month and while I’m hideous liquor— there I want to learn to ride . . .” Ia! How to describe the foul smell, the vile

purulent exudate of eldritch emulsion bearing How to describe the smell, the foulness, the gelatinous bubbles of toadspawn from its body, louring portents of ominous doom that sent did toadspawn only contain minuscule conical shivers of fear crawling up & down my spine? snail-bodies & horse-like bodies—not sea- At the remove of a third of a century, that scene horses yet, for no sea-horse has legs, but bodies still retains the power to strike terror into my of the size of sea-horses—Ia! The language of craven heart. I am no adventurer or chevalier; I the English lacks a sufficiency of obscenity to am an aesthete & man of letters, ill-suited to the encompass the monstrous presence of Hetty’s execution of such deeds. And though at fourteen “mummy-horse.” It looked at me with liquid I was in the flush of youth, and fancied myself brown eyes as deep as any mare’s, long-lashed as prepared for deeds of manly heroism as any & contemplative: some of them embedded other lad, I yet held a shadowy apprehension of within it, others extruded atop stalks like those that future self whom I was fated to become. I, of a vile unclean slug. It had mouths, too, and Howard Phillips Lovecraft Esq., a man of other organs, some of them equine, others contemplative & refined sensibilities born into a bizarrely, inappropriately human. I am reduced decadent latter age of feral brutes menaced by to the muttered imprecations of the subhuman & the unspeakable stormclouds of Bolshevism & deranged; unmanned & maddened by the Jew-Fascist Negro Barbarism sweeping the old apprehension of the limits of sanity imposed by countries of Europe, fear that I am nothing more witnessing the ghastly immanence of an Elder than a commentator, doomed to write the Thing come to spawn in a family stable in epitaph to Western civilization that will, Providence. engraved upon its stony headstone, inform the Imagine, if you will, a huge pile of gelatinous scholars of a future age—should any eventually protoplasm ten feet in diameter & six feet high! emerge from the imminent darkness—of the It bears the charnel stink of the abattoir about it, cause of its fate. a miasma composed of the concentrated fear & People like my Hetty. People who with the best faecal vileness of every animal it has consumed will in the world would take in & nurture at to reach its present size. Their bones & skulls lie their rosy breasts the suckling horror that in my all around, & it is evident from a swift perusal

104 of the scene that though it started on its equine them. And so the wheel of death rolls ever stable-mates, the “mummy-horse,” gracile & on . . . pallid, with the calcified body of a spiral coned snail fused to the bone between its eyes, has absorbed its own legs, & head, & indeed every There is cold comfort to be drawn from the sure portion of its anatomy not dedicated to its adult and certain knowledge that the correct way to functions of eating & spawning. There are deal with the problem you’re facing in your job human bones scattered around the festering involves napalm, if you find yourself midden in which it nests, for its virginal confronting a dragon and you aren’t even bellwether has with girlish laughter & coy carrying a cigarette lighter. blandishments tempted first the human members (Thumps self upside the head: Dammit, HPL’s of the household & then every adult she can style is infectious! Let me try again . . .) reach to enter the den of the monster. It is the way of this horror that when she finally ceases With Greg driving me—if not mad, then at least to provide it with a banquet of men & women, in the direction of a neck brace—I barely notice boys, girls, & babies, it will take her for its final either the time or the road layout as we hurtle repast, & subsequently it too will succumb, for towards Edgebaston Farm. We arrive all too its cannibal kind feed their spawn not with milk soon at a desolate drystone wall overlooking a but with their own suppurating, foul flesh. blasted heath, judder across a cattle grid set between the whitewashed gate posts, and I know not from which hadean pit of horrors the embark on a hair-raising hillside descent along a spawn of the unicorn hail, but through poorly-maintained driveway that ends in a yard subsequent years of research I have learned this surrounded by mostly-windowless outbuildings much: that the cone-snails are the male that look like the mediaeval predecessors of offspring & the “horses” are female, and they World War II bunkers. It is not remotely like tear & bite & eat anything that approaches them any of my preconceptions of what livery stables except a member of the distaff sex. They mate should look like—but then, what do I know? not by insemination but by fusion, the male adhering to the forehead of the female. Their Greg pulls up sharply and parks between a circulatory systems fuse & the male is presently Subaru Forester covered in mud to the door sills absorbed, leaving behind a spiral-fluted horn and a white BMW. I do a double-take when I containing only the reproductive gonads, which spot the concealed light-bar of an unmarked presently discharge via the shared venous Police car on the BMW’s rear parcel shelf. I circulation. Once mated, the tiny “unicorns” tear remember what Greg said about the into the maternal corpus, bloating their Edgebastons supplying the local cops with stomachs & growing rapidly; they squabble horses for their mounted police. Back home in over the remains & spear one another & London they’re more interested in flying cannibalize their weaker siblings, until in the squirrels—Twin Squirrel helicopters, that is— end the survivors—barely two or three in each but I guess here in Ruralshire they still believe litter of thousands—leave their charnel nursery in a cavalry charge with drawn batons and behind & set out in search of a new virgin added eau de pepper spray. Or maybe the Chief hostess who will take them in & groom & feed Constable rides with the local Hunt. Either way, though, it’s a warning to me to be careful what I

105 say. In theory my warrant card is supposed to Edgebaston as she retreats into the cavernous compel and command the full cooperation of farm kitchen. “And how is your mother, any of HMG’s servants. In practice, however, Georgie?” Greg booms. it’s best to beware of local entanglements . . . “Oh, much the same—” Greg marches up to the farmhouse door and is “—And where’s young Lady Octavia?” Greg about to whack it with the knurled knob-end of adds. his ash walking stick when it opens abruptly. The matronly lady holding the door handle “Oh, she’s back at school this week. Jolly stares at him, then suddenly smiles. “Greg!” she hockey sticks and algebra, that kind of thing. cries, not noticing me. I take stock: she’s Won’t be back until half-term.” The lady of the fortyish, about one-sixty high and perhaps manse calls across the kitchen: “Inspector! We seventy kilos, and wears jeans tucked into green have visitors, I hope you don’t mind?” wellies with a check shirt and a quilted body- “Oh, not at all.” A big guy with the build and warmer, as if she’s just stepped in from the nose of a sometime rugby player rises from the stables. Curly black hair, piercing blue eyes, and far end of the table, where he’s been nursing a the kind of vaguely familiar facial bone chipped mug. He’s not in uniform, but there’s structure that makes me wonder how many something odd about his clothing that takes me generations back it diverged from the royal a moment to recognize: boots and tight trousers family. “How remarkable! We were just talking with oddly placed seams, that’s what it is. He’s about you. Who’s this, are you taking on work- kitted out for riding, minus the hard hat. He experience trainees?” nods at Greg, then scans me with the I emulate lockjaw in her general direction, it professional eyeball of one who spent years being less likely to give offense than my carrying a notepad. “Who’s this?” instinctive first response. “Bob Howard.” I smile vacuously and try not to “Georgina,” says Greg, “allow me to introduce show any sign of recognizing what he is. my colleague—” There’s another guy at the far end of the kitchen, bent over a pile of dishes beside the “Bob,” I interrupt. Georgina darts forward, sink. I get an indistinct impression of long, lank grabs my hand, and pumps it up and down while hair, a beard, and a miasma of depression peering at my face as if she’s wondering why hanging over him. “Greg’s showing me around water isn’t gushing from my mouth. “From today. It’s all a bit different, I must say!” London.” It’s best to keep introductions like this as vague as possible. “Bob’s a city boy,” Greg explains, as if apologizing in advance for my cognitive “Bob,” she echoes. To Greg: “Won’t you come impairment. “He’s working in town for a month, in? Inspector Dudley is here. We were so I thought I’d show him round. He’s my discussing retirement planning for the mounted sister’s eldest. Does something funny with unit’s horses.” computers.” “Jack Dudley’s here, is he?” Greg mutters under That’s getting uncomfortably close to the truth, his breath. “Capital! Come on, young feller me so I decide to embellish the cake before Greg lad.” And with that, he follows Georgina puts his foot in it: “I’m in web design,” I say

106 artlessly. “Is that your car outside?” I ask attention as the inspector makes his apologies Dudley. and slithers out of the kitchen. I’m a good boy; I pretend I don’t even notice him eyeballing the The inspector eyeballs me again. “Company back of my neck thoughtfully from the doorway. wheels,” he says. To Georgina, he adds, “Well, I Ten to one he’ll be asking questions about me really should be going. Meanwhile, if you can over Airwave before he gets back to the local think of anyone who has room to take in our nick. Let him: he won’t learn anything. retirees I’d be very grateful. It’s a problem nobody mentioned in the original scope briefing “So why can’t you take the police horses?” I ask —” as disingenuously as possible, while Georgina fusses over kettle and teapot. “Are you full or “A problem?” Greg asks brightly. something?” “Jack’s looking for a new retirement farm for Greg spots my line of enquiry and provides the Section’s old mounts,” Georgina explains. distracting cover: “Yes, Georgina, what’s “We used to take them in here, but that’s no changed?” he asks. longer possible.” She sighs noisily. “We’re out of room,” she “Old mounts?” I ask. says. “Leastwise until we can empty the old My obvious puzzlement gives them a clear woodshed out and get it ready to take livestock target for a patronizing display of insider instead.” She turns to the guy at the sink: knowledge. “Police horses don’t come cheap,” “Adam, would you mind taking your clettering Greg explains. “You can’t put any old nag up outside, there’s a good lad? Mr. Scullery and I against a bunch of rioters.” (The inspector nods need a word in private.” approvingly, as if Bexhill-upon-Sea might at Mr. Miasma rises and, wordlessly but with any time to supply a riot whose average age is a misshapen stick in hand, heads for the door. “I day under seventy! Horses v. wheelchairs . . . ) came to check the hounds’ vaccination log book “They have to use larger breeds, and they have was up to date,” Greg begins, “but if there’s special training. And they don’t stay in service something else you’d like me to take a look at forever—in at six, retired by sixteen. But that’s —” relatively young to retire a horse, so the number of stables who can handle an ex-police mount is “Well, actually there is,” says Georgina. “it’s relatively small.” about the stables.” She’s wringing her hands unconsciously, which immediately attracts my “We used to take them in until suitable new attention. “And those damned land snails! owners could be found,” Georgina explains, They’re getting everywhere and I really can’t be “but that’s out of the question now—we’re at doing with them. Ghastly things! But it’s mostly full occupancy. So I was just explaining to the the new police mares. Jack convinced me to inspector that while I can help him find a take them in for early training and breaking to fallback, I can’t take Rose and Oak when they saddle, but they’ve been an utter headache so reach retirement next month.” She smiles far. ” politely. “Would you care for a cup of tea?” “New mares,” echoes Greg. I’m all agog, but as “Don’t mind if I do!” Greg chortles. I nod long as Greg is doing the digging I see no vigorously, and refrain from paying obvious

107 reason to interrupt. “What new mares would out to pasture two years ago. Sixteen-and-a-half these be?” hands, police-trained, perfect for an ambitious thirteen-year-old.” Georgina sighs noisily again as she picks up the kettle and fills the teapot. “Sussex Police I’m blinking at this point. I recognize “police,” Authority’s Mounted Police Unit, operating out but the rest of the words might as well be rocket of the stables in St. Leonards, is in the throes of science or motorbike internals for all I can tell. phasing out all their medium-weight mounts and All I can work out is the context. “So he’s a replacing them with what they call Enhanced- horse, and he was attacked by one of these Mobility Operational Capability Upgrade EMOCUM things?” I ask. “Was that serious?” Mounts, or EMOCUM—god-awful genetically “It tried to eat him!” Georgina snaps. I recoil engineered monstrosities, if you ask me, but involuntarily. “It has canines! You can’t tell me what do I know about how the police work out that’s natural! It’s messing with the natural order their operational requirements?” She puts the of things, that’s what it is. Amos was right.” She kettle down, then dips a spoon in the teapot and gives the tea another violent stir, then sloshes a gives it a vigorous stir. “So it’s goodbye to Ash stream of orange-brown liquor into the mugs— and Blossom and Buttercup, and hello to one of those breakfast blends with more caffeine EMOCUM Units One and Two, and if it looks than espresso and a worrying tendency to like a horse and acts like a horse—most of the corrode stainless steel—and shoves them at time—then it’s a horse, so it needs stabling and Greg and myself. (Americans think we Brits currying and worming and training, stands to drink tea because we’re polite and genteel or reason; but if you’ll pardon my French, this is something, whereas we really drink it because bullshit. Unit Two tried to eat Arsenic, so I have it’s a stimulant and it’s hot enough to sterilize to move him out of the stable—” cholera bacteria.) I accept the mug with some “What? When was that? Why didn’t you call trepidation, but it doesn’t smell of sheep-dip and me?” demands Greg. His beard is quivering my protective ward doesn’t sting me, so it’s with indignation. probably not a lethal dose. “Babs stitched him up, but we can’t get him to go anywhere near Georgina rolls her eyes, then opens a cabinet the stable now—he panics and tries to bolt.” and hauls out a double handful of chipped ceramic mugs. “You were attending to a breech “Where are you keeping him for the time delivery, one of old Godmanchester’s Frisians being?” Greg asks, with the kindly but direct as I recall. Melissa sent Babs instead and she tone of a magistrate enquiring after the fate of a patched him up—” mugger’s victim. “Why would you leave arsenic lying around in a “He’s in the south paddock while I sort out stable?” I ask, finally unable to contain myself. getting the woodshed refitted as a temporary “Isn’t that a bit risky?” stable, but there’s damp rot in the roof beams. And we had to move Travail and Jug-Jug, too. Two heads swivel as one to regard the alien Not to mention Graceless, Pointless, Feckless interloper. “Arsenic is Octavia’s horse,” and Aimless, who are all under-producing and Georgina explains, her voice slow and patient. their milk is sour and they won’t go anywhere “A seventeen-year-old bay gelding. He used to near the yard. It’s a disaster, except for the cost- belong to Jack’s mounted unit but they put him

108 plus contract to look after the new Units. An surround them, are nevertheless invisible to the absolute disaster! For two shillings I’d sell them host that raises the changeling in the nest. Just to a traveling knacker just to get rid of them. so too do unicorns exploit our beliefs, our But that’d leave Jack in the lurch, and the police mythology, our affection for our loyal equine with nowhere to put the other six they’ve got servants! But their fair visage is merely a coming, and we can’t be having that, so think of hollow mask that conceals a nightmare’s skull. England, say I.” I knew none of that as I stood in that terrible Greg takes a swig of rust-colored caffeine courtyard, feet braced uncertainly on slime- delivery fluid: the beard clenches briefly around trailed cobblestones slick with the mucilaginous it, then swallows. “Well, I suppose we’d better secretions of the flesh-eating snails, facing the take a look at these EMOCUM beasties. What darkness within the gaping jaws of the stable do you think, young feller?” with only a pair of steel tongs in my hand—and the looking-glass I had fetched with some “I think that’d be a very good idea,” I say vague, childish idea of sketching the details of cautiously. My head’s spinning: Georgina has the snail’s shell to compare with the swapped out the game board from underneath encyclopedia in my grandfather’s library. our original plan—and what the hell are the Standing there in that revelatory moment of police playing at? “Then I think we’d better go which I have dreamed ever since, I knew only and have a word with Inspector Dudley. I have Hetty’s blasphemous grin, the slithering horror some questions for him, starting with where he of the tentacular mollusk as it fled towards the got the idea of re-equipping the mounted unit stables, and an apprehension of the greater with equoids . . .” nightmare that lurked beyond that shadow’d threshold. To paraphrase the stern & terrible Oliver, I But I was not unarmed! A stack of chopped beseech you, Robert, in the bowels of Christ, lumber lay beneath a roof at one side of the think it possible that you may be mistaken about barn, & the yard was strewn with moldering unicorns. They are an antique horror that hay. I strode across, trying not to look within surpasses human understanding, a nightmarish those horrid doors, & seized a slender branch reminder that we are but swimmers in the sunlit that had been left intact, presumably as kindling. upper waters of an abyss & beneath us in the “What are you doing?” demanded Hetty: inky darkness there move monsters that, though “Won’t you go inside right away? Mummy- outwardly of fair visage, harbor appetites less horse needs help!” wholesome than Sawney Bean’s. As Professor Watts reminds us, fully three-quarters of life’s “It’s all right,” I consoled her; “but I need to see great & bounteous cornucopia consists of what I’m doing if I am to help her.” And with parasites, battening furtively on the flesh of the that facile reassurance I scooped up a handful of few productive species that grace creation. It is straw & used my handkerchief to bind it around true that some of these parasites are marvelously the stick. Then I strode to the sunlit corner of attuned to the blind spots of their hosts; consider the yard & pulled out my glass, bringing it to a the humble cuckoo & the way its eggs, so focus on the straw. different in shape & color from those that Hetty stared at me oddly, then retreated to the

109 barn door, her hips swaying lasciviously as she uncorseted bosom with both hands in a manner beckoned. There was, I recall, a sultry smile on transparently calculated to attract my attention her lips & a glazed & lustful expression that I, —to behold the benthic horror of the angler fish in my juvenile naïveté, barely apprehended was lurking half-unseen in the twilight, dangling its contrived to be seductive. As she stepped shapely lure before me—its chosen prey! backwards into the shadows she raised her This abomination stared at me with those petticoats, revealing far more leg than common glistening, liquid horse-eyes & woman-eyes: decency normally allowed in those days. I and it repeatedly coiled & recoiled tentacles like shuddered. “Won’t you come with me?” she those of the Pacific octopus. Mouths opened & sang. closed as those muscular ropes twitched & The tip of my wand erupted with a pale glow. I slithered around Hetty’s feet. “Do you want breathed on the straw until it caught. I found me?” her sweet soprano offered, even as a pink- myself wishing I had some tar or paraffin; with skinned tentacle with fewer suckers than most barely a minute until it burned down, I knew I spiraled around her left leg, questing & had scant opportunity. I stepped toward her, a climbing. “Mummy-horse says don’t be afraid!” steely resolve in my chest propelling me The pink & blindly questing membrum passed forward even though my knees nearly knocked the level of her knees. “Mummy says she would together & my teeth clattered in my head. “I’m like to speak with you, in a minute, through my coming, dear,” I said as Hetty retreated further mouth—” The tentacle’s blind head (the into darkness, lifting her dress over her hips. hectocotylus, as I later identified it) reached She wore—pardon me for the nature of this between her buttocks from behind. Pulses confession—nothing beneath it, but was naked shivered up it from stem to tip as she opened her as the day she was born. Livid bruises studded cloacal passage to receive it with a sigh. Her her pale thighs, some of them circular, with knees flexed towards me, baring her naked puncture marks at their centers, scabbed-over womanhood, as her weight collapsed onto that wounds that hinted at unholy practices. No vile and corrupt pillar of muscle. It supported dance of the seven veils was this, but rather the her fully: her eyes rolled back in her head as she puppet-show of a diseased and depraved fainted. “Howard,” said another’s voice, imagination, seeking to corrupt & abuse the speaking through her throat. “Come to me & feeble-minded & weak-willed & lure them to a join in precious union with this mating body, for fate of unspeakable moral degeneracy. your arrival has been prophesied by the ancients of our kind & you will be a fitting The choking air within the barn reeked of adornment to my reign.” overpowering decay, tempered by a musky odor that set my loins aflame despite my terror. I saw “Wh-what are you?” I asked, mesmerized—I a lamp hanging from a nail just inside the door. was, as I have said, but a youth: I had never Seizing it, I hastily applied the torch (fading to seen a woman’s secret parts before, & even in embers even then) to the wick, and just in time: the midst of this terrible wrongness I was for it caught. I raised the lamp & wound the excited as well as afraid—for it did not occur to wick up until it flared, & forced myself to look me then that my very soul was in immediate past Hetty—shamefully naked now, thrusting danger. her hips towards me & supporting her “We are Shub-Niggurath,” said the cyclopean

110 nightmare that spoke through Hetty’s vocal musky scent hanging all around made my heart cords; “we come from your future & it is beat faster & brought premature life to my prophesied that you will become one with our youthful manhood, but even then I recognized flesh.” that to succumb to such an unholy lust was a mistake I could ill afford to make. Hetty’s body now began to rise, legs straightening. Her arms rose too, outstretched Even so, I took another step forward. It was to and imploring towards me. Her neck righted nearly prove my undoing, for I had paid scant itself & her eyes opened. “Howard?” she said in attention to the spawn that surrounded us, her normal voice. Then in the voice of Shub- lurking in the far corners of the barn. But the Niggurath: “Mate with us & give us the gift of spawn had begun to close in, ready to resume your seed.” Then again: “Howard? Something is tearing at the flesh of their progenitor, and now wrong! I’m afraid ...” by pure mischance I brought my shod foot down on an over-eager unicorn. It was a perfect I stepped closer, mesmerized. Then another step. miniature pony perhaps a hand high at the hock, By the light of my raised oil lamp I beheld tears sporting a viciously sharp horn an inch long. It of blood weeping from her eyes. By my every screamed in a high-pitched voice & I slipped, inhalation I could perceive (from among the falling to one knee. I looked up, straight at overwhelming, choking midden-stink of the Hetty’s female parts, & saw then what had been stables) a peculiar stench emanating from her hidden in waiting for me: a livid appendage, skin in place of the normal fragrance of the either vastly expanded from her natural organ fairer sex. “Isn’t this your mummy-horse?” I (like the clitoris of the spotted hyena) or worse, asked, driven by a cruel impulse: I wanted to an extrusion of Shub-Niggurath itself, capped touch her, I wanted to open myself to with the concentric circular jaws of a lamprey, experiences I as yet had no understanding of: alternately gaping open to bite & snapping powerful emotions drove me on, no longer pure closed with vile frustration, streaked with blood and holy terror but now tempered with an & mucus, pulsing as it quested blindly from its admixture of feral lust. “Isn’t this what you vulval nest to seek my face— want?” I screamed & threw the oil lamp. Then I pushed “She hasn’t done this to me before—” Shub- myself to my feet & fled. Fiery stabbing pain Niggurath: “Take the gift we place before you, lanced through my hand; I glanced down & saw boy. Lose yourself in the flesh of Hetty van that I had been stung by the lance of a small t’Hooft & revel in the pleasure & ecstasy of the snail-cone. The agony was pure & excruciating, union of bodies & souls! Join us, join us, join & as breathtaking as a hornet sting. I caught my us!” I saw the thick column of cephalopodian breath & screamed again, then stumbled flesh pulsing behind & within her, operating her backwards. Hetty was still upright, but quivered skin like a hellish glove puppet, & I slowly from head to toe in a quite inhuman manner, realized: this thing, this hideous monster that which I now know to be death spasms, like spawned endlessly in the filthy darkness of the those that are seen when a felon is being family stable, was hollowing her out from the hanged. Blood trickled from the sides of her inside! It meant to use her as a lure, just as the mouth & from her ears now, as well as from the angler mercilessly impales a fly on a barbed sides of her twitching eyes. The vileness that hook—& I was the juicy trout in its sights! The

111 supported her skin now ate at her innards with its concealed radulae. But even as it consumed her & tried to extend its tentacles towards me, the spreading pool of oil from the lamp reached a half-collapsed bale of hay that lay beside a bloody exposed rib cage (whether of man or beast I could not tell, in the depths of my torment). “We will be back,” the horror gurgled through her dying larynx: “and we will have you in the end!” The flames caught as I stumbled away, cradling my burning, wounded hand. I remember naught of the next two weeks but nightmares, but I was later told I lay febrile & unconscious & shuddering on the edge of death’s dark cliff. Thereafter, whenever I was introduced to a member of the fairer sex who might flirt with me or whisper sweet nothings, all I could see was my the husk of my Hetty, impaled and half- eaten on the tentacle of a nightmare from the far future, even as she whispered chilling blandishments to me; and all I could think of was the thing that lay in wait for me, & what the Beast had said at the end. Not until I met the blessed Sonia was I was even partially healed of the wound in my soul that the unicorn inflicted. Even today I am only half the man that I might have been had I not met the abomination in the stable. And this is why I urge you not to write lightly of the four-legged parasite that preys upon our instinct to protect & cherish the fairer sex. They are a thing of unclean & blasphemous appetites that preys upon the weak & foolish & our own intrinsic tendency towards degeneracy & self-abuse. Worse still, they harbor a feral intellect and they plan ahead. They must be destroyed on sight! Otherwise the madness & horror will breed, until only darkness remains.

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