The Annihilation Score (Laundry Files)

by Charles Stross

  Ramona’s version of the uniform is tailored to her anatomy: hers is skintight in places, but it’s the skintight fit of thick layered neoprene rather than nylon or Lycra, because it doubles as a wetsuit for a mermaid. Mhari raises an eyebrow at me. “Why do you think that’ll be a priority?” she asks.

  “You know perfectly well why —” I only recognize her ironically raised eyebrow once I’ve opened my mouth, so I bull on just in case I’m misinterpreting her. “For the same reason they want a balanced team rather than a competent one. It doesn’t fit the cultural agenda they’re trying to impose. We look like police officers trialing some kind of experimental next-generation tactical uniform —”

  “Because we are —” Ramona interrupts.

  “Thank you!… But the point is, we’re supposed to look like we stepped out of a superhero movie. We don’t even have capes. Which is good, but it’s not what they ordered so it’s a lever to use against us.” I cross my arms defensively: “I can pull the Health and Safety defense but I’m not sure I can make it stick.”

  “So don’t tell them just yet,” Mhari suggests. “I mean, let’s at least see if they’re workable on operational deployment? If it works in the field, they’ll have a much harder job spiking it. And” – she shrugs, sleekly statuesque, and for a moment I almost see her as some kind of far future space marine – “I for one really don’t want to be told my uniform needs to show more bare skin for the teen gamer demographic.”

  “Oka-a-y…” I think for a moment. “How about you try this on the B-team and get their feedback, Ramona? I’m going to wear mine around the office today and see if there are any obvious adjustments needed for chafing or wear. If we get called on active deployment, we’ll trial it. Otherwise, though, we keep it under wraps. Just in case.”

  “Just in case,” Mhari echoes, nodding her approval. I feel a flash of gratitude, then annoyance: I don’t need her approval. It’s still pleasant, though. “How about I go and roust out Bee and Torch? I’ll send them up to your office, Ramona. Then we can go and have a fashion parade and scare all the analysts!”

  Jim is back in the Force on Wednesday. After we tested the uniforms around the office all Tuesday, Ramona packaged them up and sent them for dry-cleaning (and in some cases, alteration or replacement) – so I invite Jim into my office to show him the video Nick recorded of our impromptu fashion show. His reaction isn’t what I expected.

  “HM Inspector of Constabulary will have to approve these,” he says bluntly, “and I can tell you up front that the Uniform Committee will probably reject them, or ask for big changes.”

  “Wait what?” I stop dead. “But we need —”

  “Item: opaque face masks are right out, even for riot gear. Forbidden by policy, it makes it hard to identify officers from CCTV footage. Item: I see no badge numbers on display – ditto on identification. Ramona didn’t ask for the standards for uniforms, did she? Nowhere to show rank insignia, those equipment belts are all wrong, and there’s a standing directive to avoid looking like imperial stormtroopers.”

  “Jim.” I try not to sigh: “I’m supposed to be running a superhero team. They’re supposed to look like they’re capable of lifting you by the throat and snarling you have failed me for the last time.” I minimize the window and stare at him. “What’s eating you?”

  “Sorry: yesterday left a bad taste in my mouth.” He shakes his head as if trying to dislodge an annoying fly that’s buzzing around. “Our dog-and-pony show the other week made bigger waves than I realized, apparently. Several chiefs went home and started asking about civil contingency planning, and now they’ve got their knickers in a twist because we’re making them look as if they’re unprepared. So the first order of their day, after helping themselves to all the reports I’ve written on the subject for the past nine months, was to spread a little gloom around, which means making all this” – his sweeping hand gesture takes in the entire building – “redundant. So they’ve set up a working group on responding to extralegal paranormal activity, staffed entirely from within existing forces rather than borrowing from the Ministry of Defense.”

  “Oh, for —” I bite my tongue, furious with myself for the sudden stab of relief at knowing I’m going to be off the hook if this goes through. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means there’s going to be a ministerial-level pissing match, and I for one have technically been caught offside. Which may actually work out in your favor, Mo, but only if you want to really make this fly as a police support organization rather than a stalking horse for your own department.”

  “Well.” I fall silent, unable to think of anything else to say that won’t come across as bitter and cynical. After the SA’s bombshell on Monday this is exactly what I least needed. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour to discuss a deployment roster for the junior supervillain busters once they’ve finished their training period, but I’d rather just cancel and go home and hide under the bed, crying. (Not that that’s possible.) I look at Jim. “Is there any good news?”

  “Oh, well, I was hoping you’d ask.” Suddenly he looks smug, as if he’s been plotting something.

  “Come on. Spill it.”

  “I, ah, acquired a pair of concert tickets.” Now he smiles. “For this Saturday evening. I know it’s short notice… but would you like to accompany me to the Last Night of the Proms?”

  My jaw drops. “What. How…?”

  “I asked around and these two dress circle seat tickets sort of fell into my pocket.” He looks innocent, the kind of innocent you get when you collar a pickpocket.

  “Fell into your pocket my ass! Um. Pardon my French.” (Do I want to go to the highlight of the Proms season with Jim? Do bears defecate in sylvanian ecosystems? as my husband once put it.)

  “Yes or no?” he presses.

  “I’m trying to decide between yes and hell, yes. You’re not making it easy!” I take a deep breath. “Of course I’ll go. Assuming. Um. You didn’t have to bribe or murder anyone to get the tickets, did you? There were no witnesses and you buried the bodies properly?”

  The BBC Proms are not some kind of high school dance, but a century-old season of orchestral classical music concerts held every late summer around the UK – but mostly in the Royal Albert Hall in London. These days they’re the biggest classical music festival in the world, with over a hundred concerts and spin-off events in a variety of other cities.

  I’ve been to plenty of concerts at the Albert Hall before, and even to Proms concerts, but haven’t had time to do so this year due to the pressure of work – and I’ve never got into the last night, the climax of the season. There are queues for tickets at the best of times and no guarantees: and you can’t buy tickets for the Last Night at all, unless you can present ticket stubs from five earlier concerts. (See “pressure of work” above.) People with tickets – standing tickets at that – often queue overnight just to make sure they can get in. Dress code: anything goes, but fancy dress is recommended. There’s a lot of patriotic flag-waving, especially at the close when they play “Rule, Britannia!” Music: aside from the regular playlist there are pieces courtesy of everyone from the Pet Shop Boys to Prokofiev by way of Benjamin Britten and Beethoven.

  Oh, and the Last Night of the Proms gets broadcast live on national TV and radio, with big-screen video repeaters at satellite concerts in other cities. As I said, it’s the biggest classical music cultural event of the year in London and has been so ever since the 1890s: in terms of excitement it’s the musical equivalent of a major Apple product release. For Jim to suddenly produce a pair of reserved seats is only marginally more plausible than for him to reach into his tunic breast pocket and pull out three live rabbits and a partridge in a pear tree.

  So when he reaches into the aforementioned pocket and produces two familiar-looking concert tickets, I can’t help myself: I gape at him.

  “I had to pull some strings,” he says, slightly smugly, “but I didn’t have to kill anybody or even blackmail
anyone, honest. Actually, what happens is that a bunch of tickets get allocated every year to various London organizations – fire service, ambulance, you get the picture. Some of the private box holders donate them, or sell them and donate the proceeds to charity.” (Many of the boxes at the Royal Albert Hall are privately owned; I gather the leasehold on a box costs anything up to half a million pounds.) “The Met regularly gets about a dozen, most of which go in the charity raffle. I owe some favors if we take these, so if you don’t want them, I need to know right now so I can give them back and apologize —”

  “You didn’t raid a raffle pot?” I stare at him, eyes narrowing. “Because if you —”

  “No!” He sounds shocked. “I’d never do something like that. But between you and me, the Commish’s rather more fond of the Sex Pistols and the Clash than he is of Elgar. He’s a ‘Police and Thieves’ man.” Suddenly his eyes widen: “Please, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t ever mention that in front of any journalists? It’s really not the image he wants to project. If word got out…”

  I manage to shut my mouth. Gaping is unseemly, and anyway, if I gape any wider, I’ll dislocate my jaw. London’s top cop has a secret fondness for punk rock? The timing fits: punk is forty-something these days, and the Boss would have been a teenager, bopping to 45s and spiking his hair with soap back in the day. “His secret is safe with me,” I manage, making a fist and holding it to my heart, “it will accompany me to the grave!” Then I succumb to a quiet fit of the giggles.

  “So you wouldn’t mind accompanying me to the Last Night of the Proms, using a ticket rejected by a superannuated old punk?”

  I hesitate momentarily. The SA is setting me up as bait: but whoever he’s stalking wouldn’t dare do anything at such a public event, would they? Besides, I’ll have Jim at my side, and as bodyguards go, Officer Friendly is pretty hardcore. “It’s a date.”

  The rest of the week passes. I do meetings: back to the Home Office on Thursday for a relatively gentle anal probing by the aliens from Professional Standards, followed by a brisk session with a pair of auditors who, while far more innocuous than our own, are still capable of putting me in a very uncomfortable spot while reviewing my budget projections. I carry on reading my homework, remember to go to the gym, and order up a supermarket food delivery. I keep procrastinating and finding reasons not to pull Jim aside for That Talk, the one about K syndrome and wards and brain scans and not overdoing the superpowers; on the other hand, we’re not punching villains right now so it’s less urgent than it might otherwise be. And as the matter’s now on the radar, it occurs to me that Jim isn’t the only one at risk, so I add to my overflowing to-do list: institute regular K syndrome medical screening for all personnel. I even find time to go out for drinks with the girls on Thursday evening, although I keep my date with Jim to myself for the time being.

  Friday: a big meeting with the analysts and the B-team. We’re working up that list of three-sigma and better supernormals, and my people have begun to launder them past the PNC database to see if any of them may be persons of interest from a criminal point of view. (I’m not so much concerned about teenage drinking exploits as a long record of armed robbery followed by the development of superpowers: if we can find the next Catwoman wannabe before she starts knocking over banks, that’d be a generally all-around good idea.)

  But we’re still no closer than before to identifying possible candidates for Professor Freudstein, which leaves me walking around with the skin of the small of my back crawling as if there’s a cross hairs painted there. I can’t shake the SA’s worrying implication that Freudstein is a front for an organization, that they are inside our institutional decision loop, and that the raid on the British Library rare music manuscripts store and Dr. Armstrong’s unhealthy concern for me and my instrument are connected. I am developing a nervous habit of checking whichever warded safe Lecter is stashed in – whether at home or at work – every couple of hours, even when I haven’t been out of the room: I can’t see this ending well for anyone, even though the sleeping pills are working and I’m free from intrusive dreams for the time being.

  Other stuff happens, of course. The (cleaned, altered) uniforms are delivered, complete with kit bags so we can take them home in case of an out-of-hours call-out. (Whoopee.) Mhari and I test our rings, until I get the hang of inconspicuously getting her attention. They’re basically magical pagers, able to run without a power source and work in places where there’s no cellular coverage. Finally, there’s an afternoon training review with the junior mythosbusters, as Sam has christened the B-team – Bee, Torch, Lollipop Bill, and Captain Mahvelous – then a bunch of routine budget approval forms to fill out. And that’s my working week done.

  I collect the violin from my office safe and the uniform kit bag from under my desk, then lock my office door. It’s nearly eight o’clock. The sky is darkening towards twilight as I nod at Marek, our shaven-headed evening shift door guard, and head for home. Lecter is a presence at my back, his case slung over the small of my back like a reliquary holding the unclean remains of a perverted saint: he feels oddly heavy and quiescent, as if waiting for something. The sky overhead is the sickly orange-red of street lights reflecting off clouds and my forehead feels tight, a premonition of a thunderstorm hanging fire. My unease as I walk towards the nearest bus stop is not the normal one I’ve become accustomed to since the SA sprang his unwelcome surprise on Monday – and in any case, if anyone or anything thinks they can take me on the streets of London, they’re making a very big mistake – but something is nagging at the edges of my attention, like a specter scratching at the decaying lychgate of a graveyard —

  Oh, that. “Yes?” I ask coldly.

  ***Can we talk?*** I swear if a raw head and bloody bones could whine like a hungry dog begging for liver and intestines to swallow —

  “What’s there to talk about?” I realize responding’s a mistake as soon as I let the thought out, capering madly through the empty chambers of my skull, but by then it’s too late: I’ve admitted that Lecter is calling me, even though the wards and chains and bindings of his case. And, silly me, I’ve walked right past the bus stop. So I keep on walking.

  ***I’m lonely.***

  I stumble on a loose paving stone and nearly go over on one heel, so shocked that my surroundings barely register. You have got to be kidding me. Lecter is lonely? “Why is that my problem?”

  ***The host is my eyes. The host is my ears. Without the host I am trapped forever in the red/warm pulsing darkness.***

  This is just too creepy for words.

  For a long time now I’ve had an internal argument with myself about whether Lecter is sentient in his own right or just a passenger that stimulates his host’s brain to fulfill his basic need for sustenance, like one of those hideous isopod parasites Bob told me about. Or like Mhari’s V-parasite, the thing that lends her various powers in return for the curse of a peculiar thirst. In which case, my conversations with Lecter are just me talking to myself under the influence of a brain-controlling parasite, which is pretty bad.

  But this implies that Lecter is sentient and aware when I’m not around. That when I lock him in the safe and go somewhere, I’m placing an intelligent being in a sensory deprivation cell, deaf and blind. When we do this to people, we call it torture. Lecter isn’t a person – whatever he may be, he’s far too dangerous to set free – but he’s at least a class four agency, and if he’s fully sentient in the absence of his host…

  ***I know you fear my hunger. It is my nature: I cannot be otherwise. But must you torment me so?***

  “I’m not tormenting you,” I reply automatically.

  ***These past days/alone in the warm darkness/you leave me…*** The words decay into an incoherent impression of oceanic vastness and a sense of longing. ***Parted so long from my greater self, I seek reunion. Denied reunion, I crave experience.***

  My skin crawls. Just how much of my life has Lecter been experiencing vicariously? Too much
, I get it. The question is, can I turn this craving for experience to my advantage? “What do you want from me?” I ask.

  ***Bear me. Be my eyes and see for me. Be my ears and hear for me. Don’t leave me alone in the warm/red darkness.***

  I shake myself out of my conversational reverie, look round. It’s beginning to rain. I hold out my arm: “Taxi!” For a moment I’m afraid that my still-only-intermittent invisibility superpower is going to cut in, but then a black cab swerves towards me and I give it my address, and the hell with the cost: I’m not going to get caught out in a late summer thunderstorm with a haunted violin whispering to me.

  “If I carry you around, will you stay the hell out of my dreams?” I ask.

  ***Yes!*** Lecter feels eager. But he shuts up. And that night, for the first time in weeks, instead of locking him in the warded safe in the hall I place his case beside me on the other side of the bed when I sleep.

  Date night.

  Saturday is a bit of a blur, to be honest. I sleep sinfully late, not rising until well after eight. The morning goes on housekeeping chores, neglected during the week. Lecter watches (in his case) while I vacuum and iron and run the washing machine, a strangely passive voyeurism. (And what must it be like, to be an alien spirit bound into an instrument carved from the agonized bones of dying men and women, immobile and helplessly dependent on a human host, hungry for experience and thirsty for blood – watching while the human host irons the next week’s workwear?)

  Around lunchtime I go for a brisk walk around the park in lieu of the gym – I’d have to leave Lecter in a locker, and I have a most peculiar feeling that he’d consider it a breach of trust – then back home in mid-afternoon. Whereupon it’s time to get ready for the concert, and I suddenly realize I don’t know what to wear. Last time out, Jim said “black tie” – but this is the Last Night of the Proms. The real tradition at the Last Night is fancy dress: the more outrageous the better. I’ve got one halfway current evening gown, or the little black dress I wore to the reception on the oil rig – but I’m not really into costuming. In fact, I don’t think I’ve worn any kind of costume since —