The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files)

by Charles Stross

  “Yes, I think so.” I let the door shut, then sit down in his visitor’s chair without waiting to be invited. “It’s about Lec – I’m sorry, it’s about the white violin. And it’s about Officer Friendly as well, but mostly the violin.”

  “Ah. So it’s time for that conversation,” he mutters as he sits behind his desk, takes his spectacles off, and polishes them with a microfiber cloth. He glances at me, his gaze startlingly intimate without the intervening crystal barrier that normally screens him. “How far has he pushed: speaking to you in your dreams, sending you entirely new dreams, or actual possession?”

  “All of the above,” I admit. “Although the only incident of possession so far was when” – bleeding on the fretboard as the bow drags my fingers across blue-glowing strings, a terrified pale figure crouching before me in the living room – “in a moment of extreme emotional stress and exhaustion I was confronted by what I perceived to be a threat.”

  “And?” he prompts gently.

  I shudder. “Bob was there: he managed to talk me down before anything too bad happened.”

  “Well.” He picks up his half-moon reading glasses and puts them on, then carefully adjusts them before he looks at me. His delay doesn’t inspire confidence. “How long ago did that happen?”

  “The morning after the Code Red.”

  The SA nods thoughtfully. Is it just my overactive imagination, or is he really disturbed? “It would have been good to have known the full scope of your reasons for misgivings earlier,” he says, slowly, choosing his words with the care of a man walking across an uneven icy pavement. “I think I may have underestimated the urgency of your earlier concerns, Doctor. Are you sure you can continue to control the white violin? What do you call him?”

  “Lecter.” It slips out before my internal censor can block it, and he winces visibly. I carry on, feeling distinctly reckless: “And no, I’m not sure I can hold him in check at all times. When I took down Strip Jack Spratt, Lecter nearly weaseled me into strangling him. I had a big fight with him a couple of weeks ago and threatened to chuck him in the English Channel if he didn’t stay out of my dreams – he backed off, then – but it’s only a matter of time before an incident crops up where… well. As long as he gets his blood, I think he’ll do what I want; the problem is what happens if I have to stand down before he’s fed.”

  I stare at the backs of my hands. I feel as if I just confessed to personal inadequacy. Get it off your chest, they say: but nothing about the hollow dread, the unanswered question, what happens next, that fills your mind after confession. Somehow while I’ve been carrying the bone violin, the veins and tendons have risen to the surface: flesh falling away from the metacarpals, skin loosening and losing its elasticity, thinning, becoming almost transparent: it’s been years, and I’m growing older, and I’m just too tired to arm-wrestle with dream-demons whenever I need to do my job. I look up at the SA. “I can keep him under lockdown and only bring him along on major incidents; I can probably continue to do the job on that basis for a while longer… but I’m losing fine control, and sooner or later there’ll be an accident.”

  Dr. Armstrong stares at my eyes. Then he nods, just a slight inclination of the chin. I don’t need to tell him what “an accident” means, for which I am profoundly grateful – I can tell he’s imagining the writing on the wall, sprayed in the arterial blood of innocent victims.

  “I understand,” he says softly. An ambiguously pensive expression tugs a curtain of worry lines down across his forehead, gathered in swags by the corners of his eyes. “You’ve reached the limit of your ability to control the white violin, and if you continue to do so, the risk of an unacceptable incident will rise sharply.”

  I nod, unable to trust my voice.

  “Very well, then.” He pauses. “Mo. What I am going to say next is in strictest confidence and must go no further. In particular, you must not share this with your staff. Any of them. Do you understand?”

  What the hell? I nod again, utterly taken aback.

  “The Police and Home Office rely on police intelligence assets for their situational awareness.” His diction is fussily precise, as if he’s repeating a briefing paper he read and memorized for just this contingency. “In particular, police intelligence is oriented towards supporting police operations. It has to deliver evidence that will stand up in court: it is constrained by rules that do not necessarily apply to defense intelligence organizations.” (Like us, I interpret.) “Defense intel organizations, in contrast, operate under rules of compartmentalization that might seem excessively onerous to the police, who take a more collegiate approach to apprehending bad actors.

  “So. I’m going to ask you to take it on trust when I assure you that it is utterly essential to the agenda of OPERATION INCORRIGIBLE that you continue to act as the white violin’s custodian until the end of this month – for another three weeks. You can and must take steps to minimize the risk of collateral damage: keep the instrument in a warded safe at all times, only remove it in response to an emergency, cease regular practice with it. I can arrange a prescription for strong sleeping pills if necessary. But I need you to continue in your current role until the end of the month.”

  I lick my lips. “Why? What agenda? What happens then?”

  “Then?” He smiles humorlessly as he ignores my first two questions and evades the third: “Then you can set down your burden. The violin will either go to a new carrier” – he’s bluffing, we’ve got nobody else remotely strong enough to pick up the instrument: Lecter would eat their soul and turn them into a pithed zombie within an hour – “or be consigned to a secure repository until such time as we are forced to revisit the balance of risk versus safety. You will be retired from that particular duty, but in any case I believe we are due to review your career development path in preparation for your forthcoming promotion: you’ll have plenty to keep you busy.”

  Forthcoming promotion? What forthcoming promotion? He said we. That means the Auditors… I’m still puzzling it over when he continues: “The real purpose behind OPERATION INCORRIGIBLE is that we have reason to believe that the organization operating behind the cover identity of Professor Freudstein is fully aware of the white violin and intends to make a play for it.”

  It’s like a punch to the guts. As Bob would say in one of his more annoying Reddit moments: Wait, what is this, I don’t even. The violin is a seriously classified asset: most of our sister agencies don’t know about it, much less random Mad Science villains. I manage to restrain my reaction to a terse, “You cannot be serious!”

  “Oh, but I am.” At some point in the past minute his smile warped into a grimace. “And that’s all I can tell you, other than to point out the obvious: if the white violin is locked down in a secure vault, either Freudstein will be thwarted – in which case, they’ll come up with some other mischief before we can smoke them out – or they’ll attack the vault, in which case there will be a horrible mess. In the worst case, Freudstein will take the violin and we’ll take the blame. Unthinkable. I believe an active defense – you – will do a better job than any passive defense we can organize. Especially after the Code Red incident demonstrated certain shortcomings in our ability to manage our institutional threat surface.”

  “You’re setting me up as a target,” I hear myself saying, as if from a great distance.

  “Yes. Wasn’t that obvious?”

  He waits for an explosion: I don’t think I want to give him one, but I am so very tempted. Duty, however, wins out. I nod, trying not to clench my jaw. “Until the end of the month.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re sure about this? There’s nothing else you can give me about Freudstein? No other way of drawing him – them – out?”

  “I am very much afraid so.” He pauses. “We dropped the ball on this one before we even knew it was rolling. We were distracted by the other crises in train – mistakes were made.”

  Mistakes were made. There’s a story here, but I’m effect
ively on the outside of the organization now, trying to peer in through the one-way mirror: “Do I get to hear the full story when the situation is, ah, resolved?”

  “Yes.” He looks at me bleakly. “I know how hard this is, Dominique. I hope… I hope and trust you’ll agree with me that it was necessary, when you have the full facts.” He pause, then adds: “There is one thing. You must take pains to avoid tipping your staff off – but I am going to authorize the release of tracking wards for your team. Ostensibly to ensure your executives are reachable 24x7. You know what to do.”

  I stand. “Yes, I do,” I say tightly.

  “Was there anything else?” he asks.

  I don’t trust myself to talk about Jim. “No, nothing important right now. Good-bye.” Then I walk out of his office feeling as if I’ve just been date-raped by my best friend.

  18: CASSILDA’S SONG

  I go back to my shiny office with a brown-bag lunch and I sit at my desk, trying to eat despite my suddenly leaden stomach. I manage to choke down half a low-calorie Mexican chicken wrap before a wave of nausea grips me and I quick-march to the bathroom, where I throw up as quietly as I can. Afterwards I lean on the washbasin until the dry heaves are definitely under control, then I brush out my hair and carefully check my face for makeup damage.

  It’s not like I haven’t been staked out as a tethered goat before now. In fact, it’s how I ended up auditioning for the white violin in the first place: after the incident in Amsterdam with Bob and the museum archive and the tentacles, I went looking for some way of protecting myself. Because never again sounds pretty good if you’ve ever been grabbed by a halfway-sentient monster and used as a fishing lure: the phrase I’d rather die than do that again springs to mind, and I’m not exaggerating. If it happens again, going quietly into that dark night is my Plan B: Plan A is to fight like a rabid bobcat.

  Anyway, the point is that Dr. Armstrong is thoroughly aware of my service record. If anyone should be expected to know better than to put me in such a position, it’d be him (or if not him, Bob: but Bob is not my line manager, for which, praise the Lord). And that’s why I’m throwing up in the bathroom (and trying not to let any sound escape: I don’t want to frighten everyone). I trust the SA would not do this to me unless in his professional opinion there was absolutely no alternative. Freudstein has run rings around the Police and backed the SA into a corner so tight that the only way out entails a risk of civilian collateral damage – no, let’s not be euphemistic here: scores of civilian deaths – and a senior agent’s sanity.

  So he’s hung it on me like a fucking dead albatross. And there’s nobody to vent on, because he’s my regular workplace confessor – and Bob is unavailable. Worse, Bob is unreliable. (I know exactly what Bob would say if I told him about this – he’d tell me to spit in Dr. Armstrong’s eye, and I love him for it – but I can’t turn this assignment down because… you’ll agree with me that it was necessary, when you have the full facts.) Nor can I reasonably vent on anyone else: Jim, for example. Right. So be it resolved: at the end of the month Lecter is going to check in with Internal Assets for secure storage. And if I don’t agree that the ends justify the means in the case of this assignment, Dr. Armstrong will have my resignation.

  I go back to my desk, pale and sick with fear, and sit like a sack of potatoes for the next hour while I try to mentally digest. At which point it gets to be too much, so I hang out a DO NOT DISTURB sign, lock my office door, and give myself a timed crying jag. Another makeup refresh, and I feel well enough to unlock the door and resume the robotic semblance of business as usual. But I still feel as if I’ve been mugged, or discovered Bob was cheating on me, or something like that.

  Later that afternoon I manage to sit through a meeting without losing it, and although Mhari gives me a few strange glances I don’t think anyone else really notices. When it’s time to go home, I collect Lecter from my office safe, and I manage to navigate my way via bus and tube without jumping at shadows more than three or four times: anyone who notices it probably puts it down to one triple-shot latte too many (or to my nonexistent nose candy habit). I shovel the violin case into the safe, lock the front door, then inspect the wards on all the walls and windows twice over before I can relax enough to take my jacket and shoes off and make a pot of tea. The sleeping pills get a workout that night, despite Spooky’s best attempts to wake me up so I can play with her at four in the morning, and I’m still a little groggy when the alarm wakes me at six thirty. But at least I don’t have any more horrible dreams about performing naked in front of the Police Federation at the Albert Hall or dancing with Lecter in doomed Carcosa; and with sleep comes a sense of normality resuming, or at least the routinization of fear.

  The fearful takes another step towards becoming the new normal when I return to the office that morning, violin slung over my shoulder. I deliberately vary my routine: leave at a different time, walk to a different bus stop, catch the tube between two different stations, and cover the last mile by taxi (and damn the expense). I stow Lecter in my office safe, neither opening the case nor trying to talk to him in my own head: let sleeping curses lie. And I get on with my life, pointedly paying no attention to the Damocletian sword the SA so helpfully drew to my attention.

  The SA is not so easily ignored. We still have some paper mail to process, and a small padded envelope arrives via my in tray. When I open it a plain-looking metal band falls out: silver, I think, like a very plain wedding ring. I recognize his fussily old-fashioned handwriting on the note that is spindled through it like a treacherous promise.

  Dominique, this is the sympathetic link ring I mentioned yesterday. I requisitioned it from its previous holder; Ms. Murphy already wears the counterpart. It will enable you to contact her in event of the emergency I mentioned. I have requested the preparation of a set of four linked rings for your entire team, but they will take at least ten days to arrive.

  I scowl at the ring, then on impulse raise it to my nose and sniff it. My fingertips prickle slightly: I get a sense of Mhari’s presence from it, but why is there someone else, someone familiar? Damn Dr. Armstrong, damn him to hell. I slide the ring onto my right ring finger, where it fits snugly, despite having been sized for a male hand when I shook it out of the bag.

  Barely thirty seconds pass before my desk phone rings. I pick it up.

  “Dr. O’Brien.” It’s Mhari. She’s using my surname, which is unusual these days: the weeks of after-work drinks have, if nothing else, put us on a first-name basis.

  “Yes, Mhari?” My finger twitches. “Is it the ring with the sympathetic link?”

  “The —” I hear her sharp intake of breath. “Yes. Where did you get it?”

  I chew my lip for a moment. “The SA gave it to me. He’s concerned about our ability to coordinate in an emergency – if one of us was on the tube, for example, unreachable by phone. He’s getting us a complete set, for the entire team, but it’ll be a couple of weeks. He said in the meantime I should get used to this one…”

  “I, uh, I see.” She sounds slightly taken aback. “Why me?”

  “Why not?” I reply, with forced levity. “We’re where the buck stops.”

  “I suppose so.” But she sounds doubtful – suspicious, even – as she puts the phone down. Yet another item to add to the list of questions I’d really like to put to Mhari but can’t justify asking for fear of wrecking our working relationship.

  Around ten o’clock, Ramona whirrs gleefully into my office. “They’ve arrived!” she cries.

  “What have arrived?”

  “Our uniforms! Come on, come on, don’t you want to see how you look in skintight Lycra?”

  I really don’t – I really, really don’t – but I go anyway because staff morale trumps personal body-image issues: when you’re the chief exec, you can’t afford to balk at superficially innocuous activities that you’ve prescribed to your staff. So I follow Ramona out to her office, where Mhari is unpacking a big brown cardboard box full of plastic-w
rapped stuff. “What,” she says, “am I expected to wear —”

  “Mo? This is yours!” Ramona nudges her wheelchair towards another shipping carton. “We’ve got another four for the B-team – this is for sizing; if they don’t fit properly, I’ll send them back for adjustments before we put through the full order. You can change in the bathroom stalls.”

  I bridle at that: “Excuse me, but I have an office of my own!” I pick up the box Ramona’s pointing at and head for the door. Best get the indignity over in private. The box is surprisingly heavy. “You and Mhari can meet me in my outer office in half an hour,” I tell her. “In uniform.”

  I will say this for Ramona: her prototype uniform for the Transhuman Police Coordination Force resembles a police assault uniform much more than the G-cup-bustier-with-mini-skirt that I’d been dreading. It is not skintight, apart from the fireproof rip-stop leggings that go under the cargo pants and gear belt. It protects vital assets with anti-stab ceramic inserts rather than letting them all hang out on display. The gloves are nice and flexible, and the helmet is full of exceptionally expensive-looking milspec Google Glass work-alike electronics, although you can take them out and wear them strapped to your face, Borg-style. The boots are sourced from one of the suppliers where the cool Special Forces kids go to spend their pocket money when they’re unhappy with their Army-issue combat boots. I pull it on without undue difficulty, fasten everything up, and discover to my surprise that it actually makes me feel like I’m ready to kick down doors and arrest supervillains. It’s got GPS and Airwave radio and built-in cellular digital and even supports a bolt-on night vision monocular.

  There’s just one problem with it, as I tell my executive team (aside from Jim, who is at ACPO headquarters for some kind of meeting today): “The HomeSec’s focus group will take one look at this and tell you to sex it up.”