The Annihilation Score

by Charles Stross

  “Mroooo-oo. Nope.”

  “So, ah, what led you to apply for a job as a Police Auxiliary?” Jim coaxes. “Can you tell us what influenced your decision to respond to our advertisement?”

  “JobCentre in Buslingthorpe said tha’d cut ma bennies if I di’n’t.”

  Coming from the Human Cowboy this is a Shakespearean soliloquy, but it’s not exactly the answer either of us were hoping for. Jim’s forehead wrinkles. “Is that the only reason?”

  “Tha’ said ye’d give us a flyin’ combine harvester.” He stares at us with bovine patience. “Izzat true?”

  “Yes, well.” Jim sighs. “Maybe not.”

  I glance back at the skills matrix on my tablet. The Human Cowboy is superstrong and has an amazing sense of smell. Unfortunately his IQ seems to be off the scale, in the wrong direction. And there’s nothing here about his educational attainments. Nothing. As if they’ve been redacted. “Mr. Human, the CV we were sent is missing a few details. Can you tell me which school you attended? What grades you left with? Any other educational qualifications?”

  “Nope.” He shuffles uneasily from side to side as if the question disturbs him.

  “Why not?”

  “Dun’remember.”

  “Why don’t you remember?” Jim asks quietly.

  “Was before tha’ accident.”

  Oh. I share a glance with Jim. “Thank you very much for coming here, Mr. Human,” I tell him. “We’ll be sure to tell the JobCentre you attended the interview, and we’ll be in touch within a week to let you know how you did and to reimburse your travel expenses.” After all, he did come all the way from a farm in North Yorkshire by Megabus, just for this: I feel obscurely guilty. We stand up and I let Jim do the hand-shaking thing and show him out the door because, frankly, Minotaurs scare me.

  “Well that went well,” I say as Jim shuts the door. Exercising my real superpower: vinegar-dry sarcasm.

  “Indeed.” He sighs. “File under ‘mostly harmless.’ Poor bastard is probably unemployable. He’s barely able to speak in grammatically formed sentences. What was the accident, I wonder? Was he bitten by a radioactive cow?”

  “Not our department, but I knew letting HR publish a job advertisement and send it around every JobCentre in the country was a bad idea. ‘Trust us,’ said Emma. I am”—I glance at the next CV on my screen—“getting burned-out. We’ve got fifteen minutes until the next one arrives. Break for coffee?”

  * * *

  Interviewing applicants for an ill-defined job with no obvious career-progression ladder that doesn’t exist yet turns out to be a logistical nightmare, not to mention giving me headaches. I can see it’s even beginning to get to Jim, who is used to dealing with bottom-dwelling criminal minds on a daily basis. “I think this was definitely a mistake,” I tell him over coffee. “I know that as a non-secret organization—operating as part of the regular civil service—we’re required to advertise all postings publicly and interview all applicants who meet the requirements regardless of background, but we’re getting spammed senseless by recruitment agencies and the JobCentres are using us as a soft touch for giving their no-hope clients the interviews they need to keep their Jobseekers’ Allowance . . .”

  I realize I’m trailing off. Blowing mental smoke rings. Jim is watching me expectantly.

  “If we don’t get anywhere in the next two days, I think we ought to take a leaf from the SA’s book. Send out some discreet targeted invitations.”

  “I thought you’d already done that?” he says.

  “You—” I stare. “Oh hell. Should I?”

  He shrugs. “For what it’s worth I think we’re wasting our time interviewing random superpowers. Well, apart from building a dossier of new and exciting antisocial personality disorders, but we don’t need to do that in person, do we? Why don’t you delegate, Mo? Grab a couple of bods from HR and a couple of analysts, get Mhari to supervise, and let them do the donkey work. It’s invaluable research, making our future surveillance targets come to us for a job interview—and you never know, if we accidentally trip over someone who isn’t completely dysfunctional, we can even give them a job.”

  “You’re right.” A knot in my stomach that I’ve barely been aware of relaxes. “Hell, we could even invite Freudstein, couldn’t we? But seriously, let’s start at the top and work down. Who was that guy who rescued the woman who drove her car into an overflowing river the other day? We ought to look him up. Proactively identify the good citizens, filter out the ones with criminal records, and see if they’re willing to play ball. Shove all this messing around with no-hopers onto—” My phone bleeps. “Damn, next candidate is due in five minutes.” I blow on my coffee. “Too late to cancel at this point.” At least he’s the last for today. “Want to go over his CV?”

  Jim picks up his tablet. His brows furrow. “Candidate number four Age: Twenty-two. Name: Fabian Everyman. Assumed superhero alias: ‘The Mandate.’ School: Attended Eton College, took five A-levels at grade A*. University: Oxford, Brasenose College, graduated with a distinguished first in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Also: Member of the Oxford Union, Debating Society team captain.” His frown deepens.

  Something in my subconscious is ringing alarm bells. “That’s not a superhero CV, that’s a parliamentary—” My phone trills. “Yes?” It’s the front desk. “Right-o, send him up.” I look at Jim. “Would you mind escorting Mr. Everyman from the lift?”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one,” Jim murmurs.

  “Me, too. Wait one.” I’ve taken to wearing a basic Laundry-issue protective ward all the time, but I pull open my desk drawer. There, nestled in foam inserts, are a pair of heavy-duty bracelet wards, beside a tube of extremely unusual mascara. I pass Jim a bracelet. “Wear this,” I suggest. I clasp the other one around my left wrist, then tap the mascara tube against the edge of my desk, hoping it hasn’t dried up completely. Pale Grace™ Bright Eyes® products have been off the market for years, but in the course of wrapping up the Billington corporate empire we seized some of the more exotic ingredients, and if life hands your research department lemons and a recipe, you shouldn’t be surprised if they make lemonade for you. Or, better still, anti-lemonade countermeasures.

  The mascara turns out to be dry and crumbly with age. I manage to mess up one eye before I hear Jim’s heavy tread again. Damn. I wipe it off as best I can, put the brush back in the tube and the tube in my jacket pocket, and am blinking irritably when the office door opens. Jim enters, followed by candidate #4.

  How to describe the Mandate?

  We asked all our applicants to change into character for their interview—they can use the shower room downstairs if they’re too embarrassed to be seen on the street. But the Mandate could easily have marched up the pavement and in through our front door in his superpower persona without raising any eyebrows. He smiles, teeth gleaming like a toothpaste advert: “Dr. O’Brien! I’m so pleased to meet you at last. I’ve been hearing great things about your work.” His handshake is warm, dry, and firm as a manifesto promise. “You, too, Chief Superintendent. Marvelous to see you.”

  He makes a superb first impression but I really couldn’t tell you the color of his eyes. I can’t tell you the color of his skin or his hair, either. His suit is impeccably cut, his shirt and tie immaculate, the whole turnout just a millisecond behind the leading edge of current fashion. He wears discreet cufflinks and mirror-polished Oxfords; he has a carefully rolled-up copy of the Times tucked under his left arm.

  “Have a seat.” I smile instinctively. Jim sits next to me, closer than normal—Is he nervous? “So, Mr. Everyman. You do understand that we’re not a constituency party selection committee? We’re actually recruiting for a superhero team who will work for the Home Office. What talents can you bring to the table?”

  He smiles, and it’s so contagious that I find myself grinning back at him involuntarily
. “Well, you see,” he says with boyish enthusiasm, “I can run it for you. From the top, that is: I know we’re still fifteen months from the next election, but I’m going to be the next Home Secretary.” He chuckles at his own joke, and it’s so funny Jim and I join in, too, although I have a distracting shooting pain in my left wrist. “That’s my ability, you see: I have unshakable faith in myself, and if I believe in something, everyone around me has to believe it, too.” I nod along: that’s a very useful ability. “And I believe that, a-ha, tomorrow belongs to me.” He smiles and whistles a familiar melody. Cabaret.

  “Wonderful,” Jim says with feeling. “But what about your other powers?”

  “Oh, I don’t need any.” The Mandate’s smile widens. I realize that he’s absolutely correct: if you can make the people around you believe whatever you believe, why would you need super-strength or the ability to fly? He’ll be a wonderful Home Secretary, right up until he graduates to Prime Minister. “I can make bank robbers hand themselves in and volunteer to return their ill-gotten goods. I can make orphans laugh and I can make wife-beaters beg their victims for mercy. If I was so inclined, I could sell you bridges that don’t exist. I can and will bring peace to the Middle East. I can even do a Tony Blair impression.” He has Jim in stitches with that one: it’s true, he’s got the charismatic former Prime Minister’s mannerisms down perfectly—only he’s better, more convincing.

  I struggle to keep track of my interview checklist. I seem to have mild heartburn—no, my silly necklace is just overheating. I’m about to reach up and unfasten it, but the pain in my left wrist has turned into a burning itch like nettle-rash, spreading halfway to my elbow. I rub it with my right hand, and feel an unfamiliar restraint that seems to pulse in time with my heart. “Why do you want to, to work with, with our—”

  His smile disappears, replaced by a tiny frown of concern. “Oh, I don’t want to work with you, Dr. O’Brien! I’m sorry, you seem to be laboring under a misapprehension. I’m here because I want you to work for me.” I nod, encouraging him to continue with his explanation even though I’m squirming in my seat, driven half mad by the nagging itch in my left wrist.

  “’Scuse me,” I finally burst out. “Need to powder my nose—urgently. Back in a minute.”

  “Take your time,” the Mandate says indulgently. “I’d be very grateful if you could fetch me a coffee on your way back? White, two sugars.”

  I scurry towards the door and dash for the ladies. I lean over the sink for a minute, gasping and trying not to throw up as I run my left wrist under the cold tap. The red welt left by the high-power defensive ward on the bracelet begins to fade. Damn! That was close. I shudder, skin crawling, and force myself to breathe slowly and deeply. I’ve seen heavy-duty glamours in action before, but that was something else. I try to remember his face, but there’s just a smear of skin between hairline and chin, a vacant mask onto which it is altogether too tempting to project the kindly, caring features of an identikit best friend. Hairline? I can’t remember. Then I realize he’s still in the room with Jim and my violin case is parked under the desk and I swear softly.

  I pull out the mascara tube and carefully brush more of it onto my lashes. It’s crumbly and rubbish and as it moistens it begins to run—I’m going to have horrible raccoon eyes this evening—but I have a compact mirror, and I manage to get some of it to stick where it belongs. It stings a little, but when I finish blinking, everything is bleak and crystal-clear. I put the tube away, pull out my phone, and call Mhari’s office line.

  “Yes? I’m in with a candidate—”

  “We have trouble,” I interrupt. “Jim’s in my office and we’ve got a problem, our candidate has a glamour, level six or higher, maybe even an eight. It’s a full-blown you-gotta-believe-me field and I need backup to get the bastard out of the building. Put your candidate on hold and meet me at the front desk right now. Over.”

  I put the phone back in my pocket and head for the front. Mhari arrives a moment later, followed by Ramona. They seem to have caught my sense of urgency. “What?” asks Ramona, looking up from her wheelchair. I offer her the mascara tube. “Is this what I think it is?” I nod.

  Mhari shakes her head. “Level six or higher, you say?” She takes my left wrist and I suppress a violent flinch as she touches the bracelet: “Like that’ll do you a lot of good.” She tries to look me in the eye. “Mo, stop that. Don’t freak out on me now! Listen, are the blinds in your office down?”

  “I—I—” I swallow. “Yes.” I breathe deeply, trying to center myself again. “He sneaked in under the radar and he’s got Jim’s undivided attention, and worse: my violin’s inaccessible. Under my desk.”

  Ramona pauses in the middle of applying the brush to her lashes. (Ew, sharing mascara brushes, part of me thinks, but it’s not as if we’ve got spares: that stuff is worth at least three times its weight in gold, and they’re not going to be manufacturing any more of it once the supply of ingredients runs out.) “You should be safe from him with this,” she says. “It’s pretty potent stuff.”

  “Right.” Mhari taps her toes, waiting for Ramona to pass her the makeup tube. “So you want to get him out of the premises as fast as possible? Do you want him to leave via the window or the lift shaft?”

  “I think he’ll go willingly if he realizes we can see through him,” I say. “The big problem is Jim. If he decides to stand his ground and tells Officer Friendly to neutralize us . . .”

  Ramona glances at Mhari, who is now working on her own eyes. Our clumpy lashes make us look like a failed goth revival. “Right, so that’s what we plan for. How about you and I distract Jim, while you”—she’s looking at me—“go in, avoid engaging the target, retrieve your violin and order him to leave? If he doesn’t leave—then we tackle him.”

  “Wait one,” says Mhari. She hands me the mascara, then she disappears. I mean, she literally disappears: she dashes back towards her windowless cubbyhole of an office so fast that I can’t track her. A couple of seconds later she comes screeching back, all but leaving scorch marks on the carpet. “You’ll need these,” she says, offering us a small, translucent box.

  “What.” I focus on it. “Earplugs? Good thinking.” Why does Mhari keep silicone earplugs in her office? Ramona takes the box, extracts a pair, and passes it to me. I have second thoughts and pass it back to Mhari: plugs will get in the way of me deploying Lecter. “You need these more than I do,” I tell her. Then I beckon: “Follow me.”

  It all goes down in a matter of seconds. I open my office door and march directly to my desk. Mhari follows at my left shoulder, and Ramona wheels in behind her and zigzags to clear the doorway. I pay no attention to the two sapient cauliflowers from Arcturus but instead bend down, pick up my violin case, press the eject stud, and bring my instrument to bear on Fabian Everyman in one fluid movement.

  “Freeze,” I say, glaring at him along the fretboard. Lecter hums under my fingertips: he seems edgy, even nervous. Mr. Everyman turns to look at me, and with my Pale Grace™–enhanced vision and my defensive wards cranked up to eleven I see him for what he is. The fine hairs on the back of my neck rise and I burst out in a cold sweat as Mhari and Ramona grab Jim and pull him out of the firing line, shoving him towards the door with go, go, go! urgency.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” says the Mandate. He grins widely. I’m not sure which is more disturbing: the gaping jaws crammed with pointy carnivorous ivory, the red-rimmed eyes, or the scaly green skin. “I really didn’t think you had it in you, Dr. O’Brien. May I congratulate—”

  “This interview is terminated,” I announce. I draw my bow lightly across a string that shimmers as it vibrates, bringing a note into being that is so pure that it threatens to rip apart reality. Firmly: “Your application is rejected with prejudice. You will leave this building right now and never return. You have ten seconds to comply.”

  My target raises his arms in surrender—arms th
at end in green-skinned webbed hands, their fingers tipped with claws. I tense, nerving myself for the next note in the killing symphony, but he seems to mean it: “As you insist, I will depart peacefully. There’s absolutely no need to be nasty about this! But please, I urge you, don’t say anything you might regret after the next election?” His smile gapes wider, but thanks to the Bathory™ brand mascara I’m immune to his charms.

  I track him, alert, bow at the ready. “Which party is going to select you as a candidate?” I demand, as he stands and turns to leave. “Not that it matters, but I want to know who to vote against.”

  “Which party?” The lizard-man spares me a saturnine grin from the doorway. “It doesn’t really matter: I’ll be running for whichever party wins the election. Toodle pip, dear girl. I expect to see you in my office sooner or later . . .”

  * * *

  Late morning, the day after.

  We’re having a post-mortem on the interviews, and have reached a consensus that none of the applicants are even remotely suitable. Mhari and Ramona have just finished swearing about their last exploding clown-car of an interview with TV Channel Changing Boy. (He can fast-forward through advertising intermissions by snapping his fingers and pointing at the TiVo, crack the DRM on Blu-ray discs by squinting at them, and he’s the Federation Against Copyright Theft’s worst nightmare; Home Office superhero candidate, not so much.) “Definitely no more interviews with open applications,” Mhari complains. “We had seven meetings with highly dysfunctional no-hopers and one plausible nightmare that was entirely too close for comfort.”

  Jim sits, hunched and uncharacteristically quiet. “Indeed,” he says thoughtfully. “That was a teachable moment.”

  “Was he applying to be a superhero or a supervillain?” Ramona asks plaintively.

  “It depends on whether he fills out his parliamentary expenses form right. Damn, we’re definitely going to have to keep tabs on him. I have a feeling there was something else inside the lizard-skin . . .” I stop, convinced I’m jumping at shadows, but Ramona picks up on it.