The Atrocity Archives Page 5

  "I'm taking a break from my cunning plan to help Bob get drunk, because that's what he needs," says Brains. "He needs distracting and I was doing my best until you came in and changed the subject." He stands up and throws one of the suckers at Pinky, who dodges.

  "That's not what I meant; there's a weird smell in the kitchen and something that's, er, squamous and rugose"–a household catch-phrase, and we all have to make the obligatory Cthulhu-waggling-tentacles-on-chin gesture with our hands–"and yellow tried to eat my shoe. What's up?"

  "Yeah." I struggle to sit up again; one of the straps under the sofa cushions has failed and it's trying to swallow me. "Just what was that thing in the kitchen?"

  Brains stands up: "Behold"–he hiccups–"I am in the process of disproving a law of nature; to wit, that it is impossible to make an omelette without breaking eggs! I have a punning clan–"

  Pinky throws the (somewhat squashed, but definitely formerly spherical) omelette at his head and he ducks; it hits the video stack and bounces off.

  "I have a cunning plan," Brains continues, "which if you'll let me finish–"

  I nod. Pinky stops looking for things to throw.

  "That's better. The question is how to churn up an egg without breaking the shell, then cook it from the inside out, correct? The latter problem was solved by the microwave oven, but we still have to whisk it up properly. This usually means breaking it open, but what I figured out was that if I inject it with magnetised iron filings in a lecithin emulsion, then stick it in a rotating magnetic field, I can churn it up quite effectively. The next step is to do it without breaking the shell at all–immerse the egg in a suspension of some really tiny ferromagnetic particles then use electrophoresis to draw them into it, then figure out some way of making them clump together into long, magnetised chains inside it. With me so far?"

  "Mad, mad I say!" Pinky is bouncing up and down. "What are we going to do tonight, Brains?"

  "What we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!" (Of haute cuisine.)

  "But I've got to buy a couple of books before the shops close," says Pinky, and the spell is broken. "Hope you feel better, Bob. See you guys later." And he's gone.

  "Well that was useless," sighs Brains. "The lad's got no staying power. One of these days he'll settle down and turn all normal."

  I look at my flatmate gloomily and wonder why I put up with this shit. It's a glimpse of my life, resplendent in two-dimensional glory, from an angle that I don't normally catch–and I don't like it. I'm just about to say so when the phone chirrups.

  Brains picks it up and all expression drains from his face. "It's for you," he says, and hands me the phone.

  "Bob?"

  My free hand starts to shake because I really don't need to hear this, even though part of me wants to. "Yes?"

  "It's me, Bob. How are you? I heard the news–"

  "I feel like shit," I hear myself saying, even though a small corner of my mind is screaming at me. I close my eyes to shut out the real world. "It was horrible. How did you hear?"

  "Word gets around." She's being disingenuous, of course. Mhari has more tentacles than a squid, and they're all plugged into the Laundry grapevine. "Look, are you okay? Is there anything you need?"

  I open my eyes. Brains is staring at me blankly, pessimistically. "I'm getting as drunk as possible," I say. "Then I plan to sleep for a week."

  "Oh," she says in a small voice, sounding about as cute and appealing as she ever did. "You're in a bad state. May I come round?"

  "Yes." In an abstract sort of way I notice Brains choking on his drain fluid. "The more the merrier," I say, hollow-voiced. "Party on."

  "Party on," she echoes, and hangs up.

  Brains glares at me. "Have you taken leave of your senses?" he demands.

  "Very probably." I toss back what's left in my cup and reach for the bottle.

  "That woman's a psychopath."

  "So I keep telling myself. But after the tearful reconciliation, hot passionate bunny fucks on the bedroom floor, screaming pentacle-throwing tantrum, and final walkout number four, at least she'll give me something concrete and personal to feel really depressed about, instead of this gotta-save-'em-all shit I'm kicking my own arse over."

  "Just keep her out of the cellar this time." He stands up unsteadily. "Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some omelettes to nuke . . ."

  * * * *

  A week later:

  "This is an M11/9 machine pistol, manufactured by SW Daniels in the States. In case you hadn't figured it out, it's a gun. Chambered to take 9mm and converted to accept a sten magazine, it has a very high cyclic rate of 1600 rounds per minute, muzzle velocity 350 metres per second, magazine capacity thirty rounds. This cylinder is a two-stage wipeless supressor, not what you might have seen in the movies as a 'silencer'; it doesn't silence the gun, but it cuts the noise by about thirty decibels for the first hundred or so rounds you put through it.

  "You need to know three things about this machine. One: if someone points one at you, do whatever they tell you, it is not a fashion accessory. Two: if you see one lying around, don't pick it up, unless you know how to carry it safely. You might blow your feet off by accident. Three: if you need one, dial the Laundry switchboard and ask for 1-800-SAS–our lads will be happy to oblige, and they train with these things every day of the week."

  Harry isn't joking. I nod, and jot down some notes, and he sticks the submachine gun back in the rack.

  "Now this–tell me about this."

  I look at the thing and rattle off automatically: "Class three Hand of Glory, five charge disposable, mirrored base for coherent emission instead of generalised invisibility . . . doesn't seem to be armed, maximum range line-of-sight, activation by designated power word–" I glance sidelong at him. "Are you cleared to use these things?"

  He puts the Hand of Glory down and picks up the M11/9 carefully. He flicks a switch on its side, looks round to make sure he's clear, points it downrange, and squeezes the trigger. There's a shatteringly loud crackle of gunfire followed by a tinkle of brass on concrete around our feet. "Your call!" he shouts.

  I pick up the hand. It feels cold and waxy, but the activation code is scribed on the sawn-off radius in silver. I step up beside him, point it downrange, focus, and concentrate on the trigger string, knowing that it sometimes takes a few seconds–

  WHUMP.

  "Very good," Harry says drily. "You realise it cost an execution in Shanxi province to make that thing?"

  I put it down, feeling queasy. "I only used one finger. Anyway, I thought our suppliers used orangoutangs. What happened?"

  He shrugs. "Blame the animal rights protesters."

  I'm not back on duty–I'm suspended on full pay. But according to Boris the Mole there's a loophole in our official procedures which means that I'm still eligible for training courses that I was signed up for before being suspended, and it turns out that Andy signed me up for a full package of six weeks of prefield training: some of it down at the village that used to be called Dunwich, and some at our own invisible college in Manchester.

  The full package is a course in law and ethics (including International Relations 101: "Do whatever the nice man with the diplomatic passport tells you to do unless you want to start World War Three by accident."), the correct use of petty cash receipts, basic tailing and surveillance, timesheets, how to tell when you're being T&S'd, travel authorisation requests, locks and security systems, reconciliation and write-offs, police relations ("Your warrant card will get you out of most sticky situations, if they give you time to show it."), computer security (roll around the floor, laughing), software purchase orders, basic thaumaturgic security (ditto), and use of weapons (starting with the ironclad rule: "Don't, unless you have to and you've been trained."). And so I find myself down on the range with Harry the Horse, a middle-aged guy with an eye patch and thinning white hair who thinks nothing of blowing things away with a submachine gun but seems somewhat startled at my expertise with a H
OG-3.

  "Right." Harry ejects the magazine from his gun and places it carefully on the bench. "I think we'll keep you off the firearms list then, and pencil you in for training to COWEU-2–certification of weaponry expertise, unconventional, level two. Permission to carry unconventional devices and use them in self-defence when authorised on assignment to hazardous duty. I take it that bullseye wasn't an accident?"

  I pick up the hand and remember to disarm it this time. "Nope. You realise you don't need an anthropoid for this? Ever wondered why there are so many one-legged pigeons in central London?"

  Harry shakes his head. "You young 'uns. Back when I was getting going we used to think the future would be all lasers and food pills and rockets to Mars."

  "It's not that different," I remonstrate. "Look, it's a science. You try using a limb from someone who died of motor neurone disease or MS and you'll find out in a hurry! What we're doing is setting up a microgrid that funnels in an information gate from another contiguous continuum. Information gates are, like, easy; with a bit more energy we can crank it open and bring mass through, but that's more hazardous so we don't do it very often. The demonic presences–okay, the extraterrestrial sapient fast-thinkers on the other side–try to grab control over the proprioceptive nerves they can sense the layout of on the other side of the grid. The nerves are dead, like the rest of the hand, but they still act as a useful channel. So the result is an information pulse, raw information down around the Planck level, that shows up to us as a phase-conjugated beam of coherent light–"

  I point the hand at the downrange target. Two smoking feet.

  "What will you do if you ever have to point that thing at another human being?" Harry asks quietly.

  I put it back on the rack hastily. "I really hope I'm never put in that position," I say.

  "That's not good enough. Say they were holding your wife or kids hostage–"

  "The enquiry hasn't been held yet," I reply. "So I don't know if I've still got a job. But I hope I never get put in that kind of position again."

  I try to keep my hands from shaking as I padlock the case and reactivate the ward field. Harry looks at me thoughtfully and nods.

  * * * *

  "Committee of Enquiry will come to order."

  I shuffle the papers in front of me, for no very good reason other than to conceal my nervousness.

  It's a small conference room, walled in thick oak panels and carpeted in royal blue. I've just been called in: they're grilling people in order of who was there and who was responsible, and after Vohlman I'm number two. (He was running the course and conducted the summoning; I merely terminated it.) I don't recognise the suits sitting behind the table, but they look senior, in that indefinable way that somehow says, "I've got my KCMG; how long until you get yours?" The third is a senior mage from the Auditors, which would be enough to make my blood run cold if I were guilty of anything worse than stealing paper clips.

  They ask me to stand on the centre of the crest of arms in the carpet: sewn with gold thread, some kind of Latin motto, very nice. I feel the hairs on my arms prickle with static and I know it's live.

  "Please state your name and job title." There's a recorder on the desk and its light is glowing red.

  "Bob Howard. Darkside hacker, er, Technical Computing Officer grade 2."

  "Where were you on Thursday the nineteenth of last month?"

  "Er, I was attending a training course: Introduction to Applied Occult Computing 104, conducted by Dr. Vohlman."

  The balding man in the middle makes a doodle on his pad then fixes me with a cold stare. "Your opinion of the course?"

  "My–er?" I freeze for a moment; this isn't in the script. "I was bored silly–um, the course was fine, but it was a bit basic. I was only there because Harriet was pissed off at me for coming in late after putting in a twenty-hour shift. Dr. Vohlman did a good job, but really it was insanely basic and I didn't learn anything new and wasn't paying much attention–" Why am I saying this?

  The man in the middle looks at me again. It's like being under a microscope; I feel the back of my neck burst out in a cold, prickly sweat. "When you weren't paying attention, what were you doing?" he demands.

  "Daydreaming, mostly." What's going on? I can't seem to stop myself answering everything they ask, however embarrassing. "I can't sleep in lecture theatres and you can't read a book when there are only eight students. I kept an ear open in case he said something interesting but mostly–"

  "Did you bear Frederick Ironsides any ill will?"

  My mouth is moving before I can get control: "Yes. Fred was a fuckwit. He kept asking me stupid questions, was too dumb to learn from his own mistakes, made work for other people to mop up after him, and held a number of opinions too tiresome to list. He shouldn't have been in the course and I told him to tell Dr. Vohlman, but he didn't listen. Fred was a waste of airspace and one of the most powerful bogon emitters in the Laundry."

  "Bogons?"

  "Hypothetical particles of cluelessness. Idiots emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System administrators absorb bogons, letting the machinery work again. Hacker folklore–"

  "Did you kill Frederick Ironsides?"

  "Not deliberately–yes–you've got my tongue–no–dammit, he did it himself! Damn fool shorted out the containment wards during a practical so I hit him with the extinguisher, but only after he was possessed. Self-defence. What kind of spell is this?"

  "No opinions, Robert, facts only and just the facts, please. Did you hit Frederick Ironsides with the fire extinguisher because you hated him?"

  "No, because I was scared shitless that the thing in his head was going to kill us all. I don't hate him–he's just a bore but that isn't a capital offence. Usually."

  The woman on his right makes a note on her pad. My inquisitor nods: I can feel chains of invisible silver holding my tongue still, chains binding me to the star chamber carpet I stand upon. "Good. Just one more question, then. Of the students on your training course, who least belonged there?"

  "Me." Before I can bite my tongue, the compulsion forces me to finish the sentence: "I could have been teaching it."

  * * * *

  The sea crashes on the shore endlessly, a grey continuum of churning water that meets the sky halfway to infinity. Shingle crunches as I walk along what passes for a beach here, past the decaying graveyard that topples gently down the slope to the waters below. (Every year the water claims another foot off the headland; Dunwich is slowly sinking beneath the waves, until finally the church bells will toll with the tide.)

  Seagulls scream and whirl and snap in the air above me like dervishes.

  I came here on foot to get away from the dormitory and the training units and the debriefing offices built from what used to be two rows of ramshackle cottages and a big farmhouse. There are no roads in or out of Dunwich; the Ministry of Defence took over the entire village back in 1940 and redirected the local lanes, erasing it from the map and the collective consciousness of Norfolk as if it never existed. Ramblers are repulsed by the thick hedges that surround us on two sides and the cliff that protects its third flank. When the Laundry inherited Dunwich from MI5, they added subtler wards; anyone approaching cross-country will begin to develop a deep sense of unease a mile or so outside the perimeter. As it is, the only way in or out is by boat–and our watery friends will take care of any unwelcome visitors smaller than a nuclear submarine.

  I need space to think. I've got a lot to think about.

  The Board of Enquiry found that I was not responsible for the accident. What's more, they approved my transfer to active status, granted my course completion certificate, and blew through the department like a hot desert wind driving stinging sand-grains of truth before it. With their silver-tongue bindings and executive authority the old broom swept clean and left everything behind tidy–if a little shaky, with all the nasty unwashed linen exposed to the cold-eyed view of authority. I would not have liked to answer to their jackal
-headed servitors if I were guilty. But, as Andy pointed out, if being a smart-arse was an offence, the Laundry would not exist in the first place.

  Mhari moved back into my room after the night of the party and I haven't dared tell her to move back out again. So far she hasn't thrown anything at me or threatened to slash her wrists, in any particular order. (Two months ago, the last time she polled my suicide interrupt queue, I was so pissed off I just said, "Down, not across," using a fingernail to demonstrate. That's when she broke the teapot over my head. I should have taken that as a warning sign.)

  What I've got to think about now is a lot larger. The business with Fred was a real eye-opener. Do I still want to put my name on the active service list? Join the Dry Cleaners, visit strange countries, meet exotic people, and cast death spells at them? I'm not sure anymore. I thought I was sure, but now I know it amounts to shivering in a rainstorm most of the time and having to watch people with worms waggling behind their eyes the rest of it. Is this what I want to do with my life?

  Maybe. And then again, maybe not.

  There's a large boulder on the shingle ahead of me; beyond it, a decaying upside-down boat marks the no-go border within our security perimeter. This is as far away as I can get without tripping alarms, drawing down security attention, and generally looking stupid in public. I place a hand on the boulder; it's heavily weathered and covered in lichen and barnacles. I sit on it and look back down the beach, back toward Dunwich and the training complex. For a moment, the world looks hideously solid and reliable, almost as if the comforting myths of the nineteenth century were true, and everything runs on clockwork in an orderly, unitary cosmos.

  Somewhere down in the village, Dr. Malcolm Denver is undergoing induction briefings, orientation lectures, shoesize measurements, pension adjustments, and being issued with his departmental toothpaste tube and identification dog tags. He's probably still a bit pissed off, the way I was four years ago when I was pulled in after someone–they never told me who–caught me systematically dumpster-diving through files that were off-limits but inadequately guarded from network infiltration. It was really just a summer vacation job between finishing my CS degree and starting postgrad work: making ends meet doing contract work for the Department of Transport. I smelt a rat in the woodpile and began to dig, never quite suspecting the full magnitude of the rodent whose tail I had grabbed hold of. I was pissed off at first, but over the following four years, spent immersed in the Laundry Basket–our strange collective ghetto of secret knowledge–I acquired the basics of this calling. Thaumaturgy is quite as fascinating as number theory, thank you very much, the hermetic disciplines descended from Trismegistus as engrossing as the sciences he dabbled in. But do I want to dedicate myself to working in a secret field for life?