The Apocalypse Codex lf-4

by Charles Stross

  I stare at the thing in the pizza box on my desk. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “They’re dangerous,” he insists. “Bob? If they invite you to one of their church services? You really don’t want to go—”

  “I got that already.”

  “No! You’re an outsider, Bob. There’s this stuff about binding converts. It sounds like some sort of coercion to me, and whoever owned this Bible was very keen on underlining passages relating to it. And stuff about making the unclean vine bear clean fruit whether it will or no. There’s a strong stench of the unholy about this book, Bob. Bob? Are you listening?”

  I close my eyes. “Pete. You know damn well I’m an atheist.” He does, and he forgives me for it because he’s Pete. Even though it’s a lie; I’m not an atheist these days (even though I wish I was). “I’m not going to visit these folks’ church, either.” (That is a lie.) “But I have to prepare a report on, on their reliability. Deadline’s later today. You’ve been a real help. Is there any chance you can send me your notes?”

  “They’re on paper…”

  “Use your phone; photograph each page and send it to me as an MMS. I’ll pay you back. It’s really urgent.” A plausible white lie jumps into my mouth and is out before I can swallow it: “I’ve got to put the word out before they land a contract to set up half a dozen faith schools.”

  “Oh dear! No, that wouldn’t do at all. But I’ve only got six pages. It’s handwritten, they’re not very legible…”

  “Just send them. Please?”

  “All right.” He pauses. “God bless, and take care.” Then he ends the call.

  I open my eyes again, and take a deep breath. I really hope I haven’t got one of our last remaining innocent friends into deep trouble.

  Then I peel back the curtain and let my eyes adjust. It’s snowing heavily now, and a thick rind of spongy white covers the car park, turning the vehicles into hunchbacked white boulders. The snowflakes are big, and they fall fast. At a guess there’s upward of five centimeters down there already. I shiver, check the time, and go back to bed for an hour or two.

  But I can’t get to sleep again.

  I don’t like snow.

  Years ago now, when I was young and foolish and ignorant, I got a ringside view of what happens when it snows for forty years. Or rather, of what happens when a team of mad necromancers use a certain very unpleasant ritual to summon up what they mistakenly called an ice giant, a monster out of Norse mythology who they hoped would freeze the Red Army in its tracks and secure victory for the Thousand Year Reich.

  Well, in the short term their plan worked. Predators from dying universes trump T-34 tanks and B-29 bombers. But their triumph was short-lived: consuming energy from the structure of spacetime, the monster grew and grew and…well, when we went through the gate in Amsterdam to shut it down, there wasn’t a lot left. A layer of dirty carbon dioxide snow beneath unblinking, reddening stars. A view down a hillside towards a blue-tinged lake of liquid oxygen, a crust of solid nitrogen slowly growing across it. A gibbous moon carved with Hitler’s saturnine portrait rising behind the battlements of a dead SS castle…

  Like I said, I don’t like snow—especially the supernatural kind.

  13. FIMBULWINTER

  PERSEPHONE HAZARD LIES FULLY CLAD ON TOP OF A MOTEL bed, with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling.

  She does not appear to be breathing, but she is not dead. In fact, she is very much awake.

  In her mind’s eye she is standing on an infinite gray plain, flat and dusty, that sweeps away towards a horizon beneath the utterly black sky above. She is wearing ritual vestments, a gown made to a pattern designed by Jeanne Robert Foster to the specifications of her magus; her hair is bound up with silver wire, and she holds a blunt-tipped knife with two notched ivory blades bound together by a band.

  All this is immaterial, existing only within her imagination—but for a practitioner of ritual magic, as opposed to a technician of computational demonology, the set dressing of the Cartesian theater is a matter of great importance. Ritual magic is unpredictable, and the civil service hates it because it relies on the unaccountable exercise of power by the dismally eccentric, if not un–house trained; nor does it work as reliably as numerology or cabbalism, let alone their infinitely more potent and reliable descendants, algorithmic imprecation and computational demonology. Its practitioners also tend to die young and horribly, of Krantzberg syndrome or something worse. But to a trained adept it delivers the power to make a reality from the field of dreams and visions.

  The plain she stands on—again, imaginary—is the raw material with which she works. It is also a meeting place, for minds and other things.

  Persephone kneels and begins to inscribe symbols on the featureless landscape with the tip of her ritual object. Where it touches the ground it leaves a glowing trail like a line of red LEDs in the dust. She writes rapidly, in a formal dialect of Old Enochian. The featureless plain provides syntax completion and automatic indentation: as she scribes, some of the words change shape and hue subtly. (There are many (many (nested)) parentheses: ritual magic, realtime spell-casting, hasn’t been the same since John McCarthy.)

  Finally she completes her—spell? theorem?—and watches as a violet border forms around it, shrinking until the words are wrapped in a fist-sized knot of metaphor. It begins to rise, pulling free of the landscape, forming a glowing sphere. “Go,” she tells it. It slowly drifts away from her face, until after a meter it stops abruptly and rebounds sideways.

  Below it, the featureless ground begins to glow, forming first the yellow outline of a wall, and then an open doorway.

  Thaumotaxis: the attraction of magical power. Persephone has constructed a tool that will map the energy gradients around her and sketch yellow contours across the infinite plain, building up a map. If Fimbulwinter is indeed on the way, or if Schiller is preparing a rite of power, the solar glare of the ground will show her which directions to avoid. The map, growing in her mind’s eye, will take some hours to mature. But there’s nothing like knowing the ground you’re fighting over better than your enemy…

  She can’t return to the real world while the spider is spinning the first iteration of its map-web. It’s going to take quite some time. She rises to her feet and stretches; then, reluctantly, she raises one leg and pinches the blister plaster on the back of her heel between two sharp fingernails.

  ***Johnny. Sitrep.***

  He’s lying on his back in a dark space that stinks of mildew and neglect: an underfloor space, or a tomb, perhaps. It’s bitterly cold but he’s swaddled up in a bivvy bag, like a moth in a cocoon.

  ***Duchess? Where are you?***

  ***I’m in the Other Place, working on a map. My body is secure and I’m with Howard. Sitrep.***

  ***They jumped me as I checked on safe house three. We’ve been tracked—***

  ***I know. Howard took down two of them.***

  She feels Johnny’s flicker of surprise.

  ***Eh? Well, they sent a brick to tackle me. I showed ’em a clean pair of heels and pocketed two. Found a suitable venue and unpacked them and they lit up on me, so I nailed one with Soulsucker and KO’d the less crazy motherfucker. Then laughing boy and me had a nice long chat.***

  His mood is grim.

  ***I told you I had a bad feeling about this?***

  Persephone waits. Finally he continues.

  ***The cops from Pinecrest, they’re all possessed. All of them. And the hosts are, they’re…they’re like that time in Barcelona, Duchess, that hive we ran across. So I did the full smackdown take-me-to-your-leader thing and what do you know, he did. Full-on channeling. The usual all-your-souls-are-belong-to-me bullshit, at which time I terminated the interview, but. But. Their boss is close enough to dial in for a chat, know what I mean? Schiller’s almost certainly an elder of the old church, he recognized me that time in London, and he’s actually trying to set up one of the great summonings. It’s the only explanation that fits, and it d
oes not fill me with joy and happiness. Oh, and before I forget, Patrick says to say ‘hi.’ He’s stringing for the Nazgûl who are having a spot of bother with Denver. I don’t know about you, but I reckon the shitter is about to blow up under us; I would strongly recommend wiping arse and leaving the bathroom with extreme prejudice.***

  Patrick?

  ***What’s Patrick doing here?***

  ***He’s stringing for the Black Chamber, like I said. They’ve got their claws in deep—not his fault, by the way. We had a little misunderstanding over him tailing me but it’s all sorted now. He says the Nazgûl would be very grateful for any information we could give them about what the fuck is happening in Colorado because their own people can’t visit and the local affiliate offices are all compromised. Am I getting this across, Duchess? Because if not, I am really not very fucking happy about being here. This level of shit is above even your admittedly stratospheric pay grade, in my opinion—***

  Persephone has heard enough.

  ***Agreed, and we’re leaving tomorrow. How mobile are you? What did you do with the cops?***

  ***I’ve got wheels. As for laughing boy, after his boss used him as a telephone there wasn’t a lot left. Nobody’s going to find them for a while.***

  ***Good. I want you to come round here at first light.*** She visualizes the motel’s location. ***You, Howard, and I are going to try to drive out. But it looks like Schiller’s put a cordon around us. If we can’t get out, I intend to go for the throat. I want to nail these bastards, Johnny.***

  ***Whoa, you’re taking it personal, Duchess?***

  ***You bet I am. But I’m going to be professional about it. See you first thing tomorrow morning.***

  SIGNING OFF, SHE OPENS HER EYES TO SEE WHAT KIND OF web her thaumotropic spider has woven.

  Beyond the threshold of her room—a yellow outline surrounding a rectangle of slate-gray emptiness—loop vast whorls and spires of sun-yellow energy. Denver itself is a valley, low and dark, but around it rise ramparts of power. A narrow cutting leads towards Colorado Springs, another valley cupped between high walls of compulsion, but near the edge of the city there rises one leg of a towering arch of light. A torrent of power roaring into the sky, coming out of nowhere and leaping out across the plain towards an answering pillar ten miles to the north. It’s so strong it’s right off the scale, a multiple reactor meltdown in the middle of the background field of ambient radiation.

  Persephone stares at the arch of power for a subjective minute. Then she swears, clicks her heels together, and vanishes from the Other Place.

  I’D SET MY PHONE TO WAKE ME UP AT 7 A.M., BUT I’M AWAKE and dressed and waiting for it three minutes before it sounds.

  I go into the motel bathroom and splash water on my face, then shave. There are dark bags under my eyes and, not to put too fine a point on it, I look like something the cat tried to bury. I haven’t had enough sleep, and what sleep I managed to snatch came with an unpleasant freight of dreams: plateau, temple, sleeper, you know the drill.

  There is a shitty filter coffee machine and I use it with malice in mind, dunking two whole bags of Starbucks’ oiliest caffeinated charcoal in the cone. As it hisses and burbles I try to check my email on my phone.

  Nothing.

  Now, there are few existential crises as unnerving for a geek like me (the original feral kind—not your commercialized cash cow as-reimagined-by-Urban-Outfitters-and-Hollywood fashion geek, who is basically a hipster with a neckbeard and worse fashion sense) as being off the net. It takes me a couple of minutes of prodding and poking to determine that the motel’s wifi network is up but has no way of sending packets to the wider internet, and AT&T’s two-wet-shoelaces-and-a-tin-can excuse for wireless broadband has also shat its routing tables and is drooling in a corner. There are a couple of laptops hooked up to the hotel wifi network—I can see their owners’ porn stashes from the shiny new Dell—so it’s not my equipment. Frowning, I check for Google. Nope, and if their private backhaul isn’t talking to the local ISPs we’re in major blackout territory. Following a hunch I punch up the maps app and see if I can get a GPS signal. Nothing, nada.

  The coffee pot is making drowning-squirrel noises as I do something I never do in hotel rooms, which is to pick up the TV remote for a purpose other than hammering the “off” button. The in-house check-out channel comes up on the screen, but once I start to channel hop I rapidly confirm an unpleasant suspicion. There are too many dead spots. I can see a local news channel, a couple of community spots where amateur dramatics types are playing with their camcorders in a studio that looks like an abandoned warehouse, and of course the local porn buffet. What I don’t see is anything national: no CNN, no MSNBC, no Hitler Channel or Mythbusters. Not even Top Gear reruns on BBC America. The local cableco is clearly having a spot of bother. Mind you, I do find the God Botherer Channel, where they’re advertising a love-in at some place called the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Live coverage from two o’clock.

  I stare at the screen for a minute, jaw hanging slack. Ha. Ha. Very funny. Not. They’re even giving directions for how to get there, for any locals crazy enough to drive in this weather, and a special dispensation from Lord Jeebus to say that his faithful won’t have to worry about doing four-wheel drifts into oncoming snowplows. Raymond Schiller, Impresario and Evangelist. On stage in the New Life Church this afternoon at three. Bring all the family! A first-class production is guaranteed for all.

  With a sense of gathering alarm I rummage through my wallet and pull out the Coutts card. I dial the phone number on it and a robot with a nasal whine tells me it has been unable to connect my call and I should try again later.

  “Shit,” I say aloud, just as there’s a double-knock on the room door.

  I’m not usually prone to flashbacks but a split second later I’m flat against the wall with a stolen revolver clenched uncomfortably in my left hand, heart rattling the bars of my tonsils and screaming to be let out. It takes a second for me to realize that cops wouldn’t knock—they’d break the door down—and it doesn’t feel like MIBs.

  Feel? I wonder what’s up with me. Another funny turn?

  There’s another knock, quiet and rapid. I slide over, glance through the peephole, and open the door.

  “Wotcher, cock,” says Johnny, oozing into the room like a diffident landslide. Persephone is waiting behind him, looking up and down the corridor. She’s positively tap-dancing with impatience. “Nice piece,” Johnny comments.

  “Come in,” I say, making sure the gun’s pointing at the floor. Persephone backs inside, then turns and has the door locked and bolted in one fluid motion. “We’re blacked out. No internet, no TV, no GPS, no phone.”

  “I love it when a plan comes together.” Johnny pauses for a double beat. “What, it’s not deliberate?”

  “We had dialtone at five a.m.,” I tell them. “This is new.”

  “Well.” Persephone looks around. “There are roadblocks on the interstates, the airports and general aviation fields are shut down, and now the phone system doesn’t work. It sounds like—”

  “Enemy action,” completes Johnny. He glances at me. “You want to get out, or go in?”

  “My orders say to get out, so I’m going to leave the other on the table as Plan B,” I say. Persephone is looking at me, with an expression I usually see on Mo’s face when I’ve said something particularly stupid. “What?”

  “It’s going to be harder to drive out than you think. There is an open gate near Colorado Springs, and someone—I think Schiller—is using it to power a ward around half the state.” Now I get it. She’s tired and wired, simultaneously. Then I do a double take. Power a what?

  “Seems to me we can try and bug out,” Johnny observes. “Might not make it, fair do’s. Or we can drop it in my mate Paddy’s lap and hope the Nazgûl can do something with it.”

  “Paddy?” I ask.

  “An old mate I ran into. He’s making a living as an informer for you know who. ’Course he
won’t inform on us unless I ask him to.” He smiles frighteningly. “Or we can go down to see our old friend Ray Schiller and explain the facts of life to him. Pick a card, any card.”

  I turn to the table and pick up the coffee jug. Decisions, decisions. There are only two cups. “Johnny, go get us a couple of mugs from Persephone’s room.”

  He bristles. “Hey, you don’t—”

  “Johnny, do what the nice man says,” Persephone’s tone is even. “Take my key.”

  I am still pouring the second coffee as the door closes. “How far do you trust him?” I ask, turning round to offer her a mug.

  “With my life,” she says, unhesitating. “Only—” She stops. “You noticed it, too. What?”

  I take a sip of coffee and grimace. “He’s pushing options at us. And something feels wrong.”

  “He had a religious upbringing: he was brought up to be an elder in the very odd church that Schiller comes from. He ran away to join the army to escape. And now it turns out”—she sniffs at her mug: her nose wrinkles—“he is probably having unpleasant flashbacks.”

  “Could they have turned him?”

  “Out of the question.” She shrugs dismissively. “Johnny’s loyalty is not in question.” Her eyes narrow as she looks at me. “If you think we do this only for money—”

  “So you want to go in,” I say, as the door opens, “find out what he’s using to power the gate and close it. Right?”

  There’s a heavy chunk as Johnny puts a mug down on the desk top. “You’ve got a map, Duchess, and Mr. Howard here has got a compass.” He’s looking at the pizza box on the desk, where the complaints department has been quiescent for some time. It rattles quietly, as if it senses doom approaching.

  “Johnny,” I say briskly, trying to conceal my unease, “you implied your friend Patrick is an OPA stringer, right?”