The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files)

by Charles Stross

  I get home at two in the afternoon: hungry, tired, and suffering from just a little ennui at the frivolity of it all. I’m old enough to know better than to play dress-up party doll for a man, especially one I’m not married to and need to be able to look in the eye next week at work. Or to blow a ton of cash on shoes and a handbag and a ticket to the opera, when I could just as easily rent it on DVD. Never mind the whole dating in the workplace thing – that can go horribly wrong in so many ways that it’s not even funny. On the other hand, there hasn’t been a lot of frivolity in my life these past few years, has there? Let alone fun. And Jim and I are both grown-ups, I tell myself. I can handle this, as long as it doesn’t go too far. So I chow down on a very austere edamame salad I bought on my way home, then go upstairs to shower and begin preparing myself for the ritual of a formal night out – a kind of formal that Bob and I haven’t done in longer than I care to remember.

  Around four, my phone buzzes. I pull it out of the evening clutch; it’s a message from Jim: Want me to pick you up at 5:30?

  Yes, I send back. Then I go into panic mode. I’ve showered and done my hair and I’m half-dressed, but I’m not ready. The next hour passes in a blur. Finally, I look in a mirror. A stranger looks back at me: sleepily sophisticated, all lip gloss and crimson nails. She doesn’t look like me at all. Her red hair (the gray stragglers dyed into compliance) hangs loose in a waterfall over the shoulders of her lace-topped black gown: she’s a striking stranger, my princess-world twin sister. There is jewelry: a silver chain supporting a discreet silver bangle, earrings, bracelets that contain heavy-duty wards. It’s as if I’m looking into a magic mirror that shows me who I might have grown up to be if I’d settled on “trophy wife” as my life’s ambition in secondary school. (All look at me rather than look at what I do.) I wouldn’t want to be her every day, but it’s an interesting role to try on for an evening. I pull my new shoes on, wiggle my toes to make sure they still fit as well as they did in the shop, go downstairs (proving I can walk in them without breaking my neck), and pull on my coat. Just in time for my phone to ring.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s me. We’re parked outside. Want to come out and meet me?”

  “Sure,” I say. I check that Lecter’s asleep in the safe, energize the wards, arm the burglar alarm, and let myself out.

  There is a stretch limo sitting in front of the house. It’s not huge – you’d never fit a full-length one through London’s twisty suburban streets – but for our purposes it counts. Jim stands beside the door, holding it open for me. He wears a tux well: I suddenly no longer feel overdressed. He takes my hand with a smile. “I hope this meets with your approval, ma’am?” he asks as I climb in. There are wide leather seats and a minibar in front of us with a bottle of sparkling wine sitting in a silver tub. Jim climbs in next to me, fastens his seat belt, and leans forward: “We’re ready,” he tells the driver.

  The opaque divider in front of us whirrs up, then the car begins to move. The suspension is very soft, and a good thing, too: Jim fills two champagne flutes and hands one to me. “You look marvelous,” he says quietly. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  Slightly star-struck, I take the glass: “And you’ve outdone yourself, you smooth mover!”

  “I thought we should start as we mean to go on.” He looks quietly smug. “Might as well celebrate our success.”

  “To success,” I say. Chink of glassware. I take a sip: bubbles in my nose. “Past and future.”

  It takes half an hour for the limo to rock and sway across the bridge and into the heart of the theater district, by which time our glasses are running dry – but rather than offering a refill, Jim raises a finger. “Nearly there,” he says.

  “Nearly where?” I ask.

  “Surprise.”

  The car pulls in beside a slightly grubby red carpet that runs out to the curb. Then I see the restaurant awning: “Oh my.” I’m not used to dining in restaurants owned by chefs with their own TV show.

  “Don’t worry, the pre-theater option is very reasonably priced. We have” – he pushes back his cuff to reveal an antique Rolex Oyster – “seventy-five minutes. And we have a reservation. They’ll be ready for us.”

  He hands me out of the car, and we walk together to the door, which a uniformed doorman opens before us. I feel very self-conscious, but not in my usual bad, vulnerable, cross-hairs-on-the-small-of-my-back way. Once inside, an attendant takes my coat; Jim’s pupils dilate as he sees my dress properly for the first time. “Good golly, Miss Sakamoto, you’re beautiful!” he misquotes.

  “Science!” I whisper, with emphasis, and grin at him. His answering smile is qualitatively different from anything I’ve seen on his face before, and for a moment the part of me responsible for self-restraint hopes that I haven’t gone too far.

  Dinner is a blur. Small portions, designed not to inconvenience the stomach of the theatergoer: it’s beautifully laid out but not terribly filling. Jim’s conversation is witty and entertaining and we skirt around work delicately. “If only we could organize the whole planet as well as you’ve organized your department,” Jim says wistfully. “You could bring about world peace and abolish poverty and crime! Except we’d have to elect you planetary overlord first.”

  “Nah, I’m really not up to that job,” I tell him. “Anyone who could do it well is sane enough not to want it. Anyone who wants it is by definition unsuitable. Anyway, it’s a committee job – even being head of state for one country is too big a job for a single person to do without a whole team working behind the scenes. What do you say?”

  “At ACPO team-building sessions we have this discussion on days with a Y in their name.” He pauses to eat a mouthful. “It’s called the setting-the-world-to-rights session. You can probably imagine the direction it takes when you get a room full of twenty mildly inebriated senior police officers with PhDs in sociology or criminology.”

  “It’s probably a good thing they don’t have their hands on the levers of power, then. When your tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. They run the Police: QED.”

  “They’re not quite as simple-minded as that,” he says, mildly.

  “No, of course not.” I reach across the table and touch his hand reassuringly. “But. ‘Rules are rules,’ and their career path has conditioned them for decades to believe that laws should always be enforced even-handedly. Rule of law and all that. It’s not their job to ask how the laws are made, and who benefits from them. Rules are fine for machines, but human beings aren’t perfect spheres of uniform density and negligible frictional coefficient.”

  “Ah, the spooks viewpoint.” His lips purse in good-natured amusement. “Any number of shades of gray.”

  We finish up in the restaurant. I go to powder my nose and while I’m gone, Jim summons the limo: as we reach the front door, it’s at the end of the red carpet, waiting for us. He booked it for the whole evening, I realize with a frisson of doubt and secret excitement. I’m conflicted: unsure how to react. Bob moved out a couple of months ago, but I’m not ready to put a dot at the end of that sentence and move on: it’s all a bit fast. On the other hand, it’s fun and magical and an excuse for escapism: romance, even. Bob is many things, but there is not a single romantic bone in his body. Whereas Jim, who one might expect to be a stolid, plodding policeman, has a barely submerged romantic streak as wide as a motorway. Setting the world to rights indeed!

  The opera itself is almost an anticlimax. Verdi, doomed lovers, romantic tragedy: What more is there to say? It is, needless to say, a solid, reliable performance with one or two call-outs. Jim has found us seats at the front of a large box, but it’s also home for the evening to other groups – corporate executives and their WAGs (and in some cases, HABs). They’re all dressed to the nines so we don’t stand out. It makes for an odd combination of intimacy and anonymity, and so we sit knee to knee for two and a half hours.

  The final curtain call is over; the lights come up. Conversation rises around
us. “The evening is still young,” Jim murmurs, “and the magic carriage won’t turn into a pumpkin until one o’clock. What do you say?”

  “I say, hello evening…” He offers me his arm: I take it, and we return to the limo (one of several queuing patiently outside the crush in front of the Royal Opera House). I slide into it gratefully. “Where to next?” I ask.

  “I have something in mind.” His eyes twinkle wickedly. He knocks on the partition: “Destination four, please.”

  “Wait, where —” The car begins to move.

  “It’s a surprise,” he says. Quietly: “Do you trust me?”

  “I —” I look him in the eye. “This is all a bit fast.”

  “I’m sorry. If you want, I’ll give you a lift home immediately —”

  “No, that won’t be necessary.” I relax. He’s fast, but smooth – and he knows when to back off. He’s a grown-up: more grown-up than Bob will ever be. Is that what I’ve been missing? A real grown-up man in my life? I’m not sure. I’m not sure I’ll ever be sure, frankly. His attention is flattering, very flattering. I’m absolutely dead certain he’s been working up to this for some time. But he’s given no hint of it before now. “Surprise me,” I tell him, stretching luxuriously.

  “Happily. It’ll take about twenty minutes to get there. Would you care for a top-up?”

  And so we get through our second champagne flute of the evening.

  Some time later we pull up alongside another red carpet. “You can leave your coat in the car,” Jim tells me, “he’ll pick us up when we’re ready to go.” So I shed my heavy outer shell and Jim helps me out of the limo, and we walk along the runner. There are reporters here, paparazzi: one or two flashes go off and I almost flinch before I realize that they’re not aimed at me.

  “What is this?” I hiss in his ear, a rictus smile baring my teeth at the world as I lean on his arm.

  “Look up.”

  I look up. “Wow, it’s Minas Tirith!” Yes: the red carpet leads to a glass entrance and an atrium with a ceiling high enough that our office building could fit comfortably under it. We’re at the foot of the London Shard, the tallest building in the European Union. It’s pretty small beer by Chinese or American standards – it doesn’t even make the top fifty skyscrapers worldwide – but it’s the tallest here. And Jim is leading me across the lobby red carpet towards a bank of express elevators.

  “I scored two tickets to a very exclusive party,” Jim confides in me. “I’m afraid this qualifies as work, not pleasure: hope you don’t mind.”

  I tighten my grip on his arm. Dammit. “Why?”

  “I thought you ought to be here to see it.”

  “To see what?”

  “I got wind of it yesterday afternoon from a source at the Yard, via the Integrated Intelligence System. It’s a meet-and-greet for persons of interest to our host, his eminence, Sheikh Ammar Al Nuaimi. I very much doubt he’ll be seen in public here tonight, but there may be some discreet invitations to his apartments downstairs from the observatory level. Most of the guest list are investment bankers and political lobbyists, but word is that he is extremely interested in meeting three-sigma powers: I barely had to express interest… ah, here we are.”

  The spacious glass-walled lift to the observation deck is stunningly fast and smooth, and my ears pop on the way up. We don’t have it to ourselves, mind you: the other passengers are a mix of middle-aged couples and younger and more glamorous hangers-on, all in evening dress. Nobody I recognize. At the top, the doors open and white-gloved attendants direct us out onto a floor which serves as an open-air viewing platform. It’s surrounded on four sides by giant triangular glass walls and support trusses that extend several stories above us. We’re sheltered from the wind, but it feels light and airy and a little bit chilly: a harbinger of early autumn. Waiters with drinks trays and bottles circulate discreetly. Jim and I both accept glasses of white wine. “Do you recognize anyone here?” I ask.

  Jim scans the room slowly. “Not yet.” There are about forty people present so far, with more arriving steadily. I think I recognize one: she looks vaguely like Persephone the Auditor, if I squint and try to imagine how she would look in a couture gown with her hair scraped back and lacquered until it gleams.

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “Got one possible, but she’s one of ours.”

  “I’ve got another,” Jim says quietly. “Not a POI, I’m afraid: she’s an Assistant Commissioner in the Met. And my boss’s boss.”

  That rank might sound junior, but it actually puts her three levels above Jim, a Brigadier to his Colonel. I briefly wonder if we’ve blundered into a black tie version of The Man Who Was Thursday, updated for a new century. “Might be best to avoid her,” I propose, gently steering him away from the direction he was scanning. Arm in arm, we slowly pace the length of a stupefyingly high glass wall. “This whole meet-and-greet for superpowers thing might have worked out a lot better if the Sheikh hadn’t specified black tie. They don’t exactly stand out when they’re not wearing skintight Lycra with capes, do they?”

  “Indeed not.” We reach the corner and turn. “Uh-oh.” Approaching us from the other wall is the woman Jim zeroed in on, in conversation with a distinguished-looking fellow with a white goatee and thick glasses. She looks to be about my age, wearing a rather plain dark blue evening dress.

  “Ah, I thought I recognized you!” she says to Jim. To me, a brief pro forma smile. “Hello. I’m Jim’s boss’s boss. Laura Stanwick.” She extends a hand.

  We shake. “This must be matrix management central then, because Jim is working part-time for me,” I tell her.

  “Oh?” She suddenly focuses on me like a hawk. “Then you must be Dr. O’Brien.” I let go of her hand. “I’ve read a lot of reports about you,” she says drily, “not much of it negative.”

  “Thank you…”

  “Shame they’ve thrown you in the piranha tank at the deep end,” she says. Another brief smile. “Good show yesterday.” She turns to Jim, implicitly dismissing me: “Jim, we need to talk about implementation of the plan some time next week. It’s imperative that we move forward with all due speed.”

  “Um, yes, ma’am.” Jim casts me a worried glance. “Can this wait until Monday?”

  “I suppose it’ll have to.” She glances at me. “See you around! Can’t stay, must circulate. Toodle-pip.” She collects White Goatee, who is swaying slightly and contemplating his nearly empty wine glass. “Come along, dear.”

  Jim stares after her. “Well, I never.”

  “Never what?” I take his arm. “Surprised to learn that Assistant Commissioners are married?”

  “No…” He trails off. “But I hope she hasn’t gotten the wrong end of the stick about us. Here, let’s circulate. We’ll never know if anyone interesting is here if we pretend to be wallflowers.”

  Suddenly I realize that I am standing far too close to the glass, and I am backlit, making me a perfect sniper target. I take three long steps sideways, then look round furtively as I tug my gown back into place. “Sorry,” I say.

  Jim looks concerned. “You’re very twitchy tonight.”

  “I left my violin in the safe. Old security reflexes… let’s stay away from the walls from now on?”

  We circulate for what feels like the best part of an hour, while we drain our wine glasses. We pass the woman I suspect of being an Auditor once more, but she’s so elaborately made-up that it might be her evil twin, and in any case she gives no sign of recognizing me. Nobody is casting fireballs or levitating or crushing coal into diamonds. It’s just a very boring reception for the sorts of movers and shakers that a moderately anglophile Sheikh might invite round for a Saturday night’s entertainment.

  “This is crap,” I confide in Jim’s ear around the time my glass is empty and my feet are beginning to ache from the hardwood floor.

  “Want to split?” he whispers back.

  “Yes.” I lean on his arm. “If we’d got the database up and running and had a cont
act sheet memorized, this might have been useful, but as it is we’re a couple of weeks too early… get me out of here?”

  Jim sends a text, and the long black beetle-shiny limo is waiting for us at the end of the red runner when we arrive at the bottom of the lift shaft. Everything about the Shard is calculated to make you feel bug-on-a-microscope-slide small: the celebrity perp walk down the carpet seems to take forever, and for some reason – too many glossy magazines, I suppose – I keep a fixed grin on my face the whole way. I’m falling into an acting role again, rather than being myself as I was for a few hours in Jim’s presence. Then I feel his strength through his arm and I snap back into my own head: only now I have an impulse to lift my shoulders and stick my chest out and tap my heels as I walk, because Jim is magnificent and he needs a glamorous catwalk companion, and I want to be the sort of glittering woman who belongs on his arm, because this sort of setting comes with a natural magical glamor of its own. Look at me! The smile feels natural as I tighten my grip on him. Then he opens the car door and hands me in.

  Once the door is closed, the car begins to move. “Where to?” he asks quietly. “I can take you home if you want.”

  I am intensely aware that we’re in the back of a limo together, on a slippery leather seat that slides half-flat. I’m still holding his hand, and I’m keeping myself from sliding down the seat mainly by digging in one heel and bending my knee so that it pushes into view. I’m not wearing the lace stockings I picked for Bob: no, I chose sheer black silk for tonight. Suddenly I feel very wicked. “I want you to take me home,” I tell him, taking his hand and tugging it across to rest on my knee. “But you choose the route – fast or slow.” Then I lean towards him and he kisses me.

  I don’t know how long we spend in the back of the limo. Time flies by when you’re having fun. On the other hand: we’re in a car. And kissing and cuddling is all very well, but I’m still a bundle of unresolved internal conflict and zinging energy. I haven’t completely lost my grip on myself. I want to have fun, damn it: I’ve had precious little in the past month. But an icy-cold part of me also wants to be able to go to work on Monday and look my co-workers in the eye. Nor am I quite certain I’m ready to give up on Bob for good. The self-doubt finally prompts me to cool things a little: Jim follows my lead because, I suspect, he, too, is mature enough to realize the consequences if we take this to its logical end point. One-night stands with co-workers are so not my thing – so we pause on the threshold, and I don’t invite him in with me when the car pulls up outside my front door.