The Annihilation Score

by Charles Stross

  My self-respect has taken a battering from these successive betrayals of trust. But I’m still angry: and as long as I’m not numb, I’ve got something to work with.

  And more to the point, I think Lecter has inadvertently given me a way out.

  * * *

  There is this thing about my oath of office: I’m sworn to the defense of the realm, and I’m sworn to obey lawful orders.

  That’s the horrible thing about Laura Stanwick’s having served me with notice under Part 2 of the Civil Contingencies Act, signed by the Home Secretary, after the SA helpfully seconded me to the Home Office. It’s entirely lawful, because the CCA is essentially an enabling act that allows designated emergency commanders to make it up as they go along. It was designed to ensure continuity of operations in event of a major catastrophe, such as a nuclear war. And I’m helpless to refuse it, because the geas built into my oath of office requires me to obey lawful orders.

  But the sorcerers who devised the geas weren’t stupid. I have some latitude in how I interpret an order.

  Laura Stanwick ordered me to go on stage with the white violin and play the sonata from The King in Yellow before a live audience.

  But she didn’t order me to help Lecter unlock the astral gate and summon his master. That’s the instrument’s agenda, not the Home Office at work.

  And, more prosaically, she forgot to order me not to do anything else.

  * * *

  In that frozen moment, standing in the middle of the amphitheater of dreams in Lecter’s memory of long-lost Carcosa, I realize what I have to do.

  I draw on what willpower I have and slip sideways, away from even this shadow of reality. Lecter’s spectral outline shifts, drifting towards me: I take a step back, then another.

  ***Where have you gone?***

  I can feel my invisibility, like a cloak I can tug around myself. I take a step sideways, towards Jim’s frozen image. The glowing eyes—he’s not possessed yet, not quite: he’s just open to possession, if Lecter comes into his full power and erupts, unleashing a tidal wave of hunger across the stage. I reach around his shoulders and shroud him in my imaginary cloak.

  ***What are you doing? Reveal yourself at once!***

  A voice of thunder rattles from the stone steps around us, hammering my ears. Jim’s body is rigid as stone, stiff, unbreathing in this place—an instant between heartbeats—

  The thing that is Lecter pounds away across the stage, bowling through the oboes and clarinets like a vengeful fury, scattering mannequin musicians in all directions.

  ***Come back!*** he howls, distracted. Good.

  I can’t feel my fingers properly. That’s also a good sign. It means the illusion he’s woven to trap me here is slipping slightly.

  I lean in close towards Jim’s face. “Jim. Jim! Wake up! Snap out of it!”

  Something changes. He doesn’t move, doesn’t respond—but after a moment I realize he’s breathing. Trapped in this place with me, outside time.

  “Jim!” If this were a fairy tale, I’d have to kiss him or something, but unfortunately the real world is a whole lot more complicated—and I am not going there until Officer Friendly and I have had a free and frank exchange of opinions about loyalty—

  So instead, I kick him on the right shin, hard.

  “Ow!” Jim staggers, the luminosity fading from his eyes. “Ah, ow! Mo, where are—”

  “Get down!” I grab him again, stretching my shroud, and drag him to the ground as Lecter howls and shrieks overhead, blotting out the moons as he flies across the arena.

  “Where are—”

  “Shut up,” I hiss. It takes concentration to extend my imaginary cloak around others, but I’ve done it before. I did it for Busy Bee in Downing Street; I can do it for Jim here. “Listen, we’re awake in Lecter’s dreamscape. Stanwick thinks if I play this sonata with the modified lyrics, she can turn a third of the population into obedient little constables. Lecter has other ideas, and if I finish it, we’re in a world of hurt. That”—there is a pale silver ovoid glimmering in the air at the far side of the stage, a portal of a kind I’ve seen before and really don’t want to be seeing here—“is Lecter attempting to summon his superior avatar, the King in Yellow—”

  “Oh shit, is that—”

  “Yes, shut up—in a moment you’re going to wake up on stage again and you’ve got to stop me playing. Do you understand?” I grab his shoulders, wrap my arms around him.

  I stare into his eyes and see the confusion bleed away, replaced by worried concern: “Mo, can’t you—”

  “Laura hit me with a geas! Do you know the story, the red shoes? Someone else has to stop me.”

  “But I—” He looks sick. “I’m really sorry, I had no idea she was planning—” Another mournful howl splits the air: Lecter soars high above the ruins of Carcosa, searching for his runaway host. “You want me to stop you playing?”

  “Got it,” I say. “And try not to use your superpowers. If you use them here, it could be really bad.” That would attract the feeders, like sending up an occult signal saying K syndrome fast food buffet here. He’s hugging me back, and because we’re trapped between ticks of the clock in a dream of desolate ruins, I lean close to him and kiss him on the lips once, by way of a good-bye, and as I feel him respond we—

  —Fade to standing spotlit on a stage, wrists and shoulders feeling pierced by hot wires and blood trickling down my stinging fingertips to lubricate the blue-humming strings of the white violin as I face the music in the Albert Hall, the bow dragging my hand back and forth as the tempo increases and the chorus raise their voices in an unearthly counterpoint—

  ***Found you!*** Lecter shrieks inside my head, as my right ring finger buzzes emphatically and I sense rather than see a great tattered bat shape flapping towards me out of the darkness beyond the lights.

  Then Jim makes his move and all hell breaks loose.

  * * *

  For a split second Jim stands beside me, white-gloved hand hovering over the corner of the score from which my bleeding hands are compelled to play. Then he grabs the manuscript and jumps. I told him not to: but of course, silly me, my mojo is all about being ignored.

  I gape, following his leap. Any lingering doubt that Jim is indeed Officer Friendly vanishes after him as I follow his trajectory towards the dress circle boxes.

  ***COME BACK!*** Lecter howls in my head, deafening me, but the geas is broken: with no musical score I can’t continue the performance. I slowly turn towards the orchestra, lowering my bow as a steady trickle of blood runs down the fingerboard of my instrument and splatters to the floor.

  There’s something wrong with the bow, I realize dimly. My finger vibrates again, an urgent imperative. Faces look at me, and these eyes are indeed glowing, writhing blue-green worms twirling within the heads of people who no longer exist in any human sense of the word. The instrument feels dead. It feels like, like a violin made of bone. The anima that gave it such a vibrant sense of life has departed.

  No, it’s not dead. Rather, I’m keeping an iron grip on my own visibility because something in the back of my head is terrified that Lecter will notice me again. I’ve blocked him out completely. As long as he can’t see me, his attention will be turned elsewhere. But that might not be a good thing.

  All around me stand the bodies of orchestra and Proms-goers, occupied by the lesser feeders in the night for whom the recital has opened the way: mindless processes of contagion and possession that swirl in the wake of the greater summonings and seek living bodies to run on, allowed to swarm in because Laura Stanwick wouldn’t take no for an answer and didn’t let me fully explain the risks of a recital with the white violin so close to breaking loose—and in a moment they’re going to realize that I’m not one of them—

  The words oh and dear spring to mind.

  I often find myself wishing for my husband, mos
t frequently for trivial reasons ranging from mere comforting conversation to kitchen sink-side assistance—but right now I could really use him. If Bob was here, putting down an incursion of a few thousand hungry feeders in the night would be a non-problem: that’s the sort of thing the Eater of Souls does.

  Again, if things stood as they did six months ago, when I was still in control of my instrument and Lecter damned well did as he was told, this would be a non-problem.

  But not only am I no longer with my husband, I am hiding from my instrument’s attention (because he seems intent on turning me into a tool of his own will). So I appear to be stranded in the middle of a zombie mosh pit with a thousand or more feeder-possessed bodies, a numb violin, a dysfunctional superhero costume, and only my own talent to fall back on. I just hope the feeders aren’t paying attention to the bat-signal right now, because if they are, I’m done for.

  Tightening my invisibility around me like a cloak, I carefully step sideways towards the soloist’s seat—I’m really glad to see that she listened to me and left. I think I can do this: the possessed are still focused on where I stood a moment ago. And they’re not actually moving. Maybe they can’t see me—no, they’re tracking me. Or rather, they’re tracking the thing I’m carrying. They’re tracking Lecter.

  This goes beyond an oh dear moment. I analyze my options, and this is what I get:

  I can get out of here on my own. They can’t see me, any more than anyone else who I don’t want to be seen by can see me. But if I scuttle away, I’ll be leaving several thousand Prom-goers in thrall to whatever brain-eating parasites Lecter has invited to the party. I’ll also be leaving a truly hideous mess for the first responders when they arrive on scene. What I should do is try to banish them—but I can’t do that without my instrument’s cooperation.

  Or can I?

  I look up at the shadowy recesses of the ceiling. Jim’s up there somewhere, isn’t he? He took the score. I can only hope he’s got the sense to run away, that the feeders didn’t notice him, and that the high-power ward I upgraded him to is strong enough to protect him as long as Lecter can’t see him directly—

  (My belt pouch vibrates. A moment later the ring on my right hand contracts painfully, pulsing twice.)

  —This had better be important. I reach into my pouch and quickly glance at my phone. There’s a text message, from Mhari. My knees go weak. We’re coming in. Can you distract them?

  I tap out a reply with shaking fingers: will try. I hit “send,” then shove my phone back in the pouch and look around. The second violin sits slumped forward, eyes glowing—her instrument has fallen at her feet, unnoticed. I pick up her stand and score. My fingertips feel as if they’ve been burned, and I leave a reddish smear on everything I touch, especially the papers. Careful not to brush up against any of the possessed, I pick my way past the immobile players and walk towards the concert grand parked at the side of the stage. I’m in luck: the lid is down, the pianist not yet on stage to play his part of the program. I climb onto the stool, then boost myself up onto the top of the horribly expensive instrument, trying not to think about what my boots are doing to its finish—but for what I’m going to do next, I need a raised platform with a good view in all directions, the better to see my audience.

  I set up the stand, open the score, and raise my instrument. Mine, not Lecter’s. It’s still the same bone-white body, made from materials nobody in their right mind would enquire too closely about, but there’s no sense of his attention hovering around it. Lecter, the entity bound into the body, is elsewhere right now. No time to check whether this is safe, I’ve just got to hope that it works—

  I flip through the score, looking for what I need.

  Stanwick’s inadvisable editing of the second half of the night’s program replaced a medley of popular pieces with The King in Yellow, but she didn’t touch the traditional closing sequence: even to a manipulative philistine like her, rearranging the traditional end of the Last Night concert qualifies as sacrilege or treason or both. So I cut straight to the climax. First up in the sequence is Ansell’s Plymouth Hoe, a nautical overture, but there’s precious little I can do with it with just one violin—I could run through the main theme, but it’s light on strings and heavy on the brass and winds. So I flip past it and go straight to “Rule, Britannia!” Now that’s scored for strings. I’ll have to improvise a bit, and I can’t count on any support from the chorus (who are peering, green-eyed and silent, in the direction of Lecter’s body), but it’s really hard to mess up something so deeply ingrained in anyone who learned violin in a British secondary school. It’s traditionally followed by Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D minor—better known as “Land of Hope and Glory”—then “Jerusalem” (the Proms are really big on Elgar), finishing with the national anthem.

  “This had better be worth it, Mhari,” I mutter. I’m terrified that I’m going to get this wrong: that’s what comes of paying too much attention to my own fear and self-doubt. I’ve got to do this, got to get it right the first time. I take a deep breath and I start to play, my fingertips sore and bleeding across strings that remain stubbornly dark.

  The sound of one violin playing in a concert venue the size of the Albert Hall is a lonely thing, but there is none of the usual quiet side chat, shuffling, and laughter you’d expect from a regular audience: as I begin, you could hear a pin drop. Normally the audience would be on their feet, brandishing banners and singing along with the lead soloist and the BBC chorus: it’s the nearest thing you’ll get to an American-style display of hyper-patriotic flag-waving from the normally reticent British. But this isn’t a normal concert audience. As I play, I look around at my audience. They’re cold, cold as the grave: thousands of pairs of pale green-glowing eyes focus on the thing in my hands, their bodies standing immobile, trapped within shells of flesh. I can’t even tell if they’re still alive or if their souls have already been eaten. Part of me is still concentrating on my invisibility, fearful that if I relax my focus, Lecter will notice me. If he wins again, I’ll have to play, and I won’t be able to stop until my hands are bleeding stumps no longer able to hold bow to string—

  Heads begin to turn, one by one at first, then in a wave of iridescence that flashes across the floor of the hall. Something is happening behind me, but I don’t dare look round: I have to keep the music flowing. But it’s hard to concentrate on playing and to withhold myself from visibility at the same time. The need to remain unseen is the antithesis of the performative impulse.

  ***Stop it. Stop it now!***

  Lecter has finally noticed me. My fingertips burn as the strings and bow light up with blue-green fire, spiraling whorls of light that echo the gaze of the possessed. Is it my imagination or does he sound frightened, querulous?

  “Not going to stop,” I hum quietly along to the score.

  ***You must not do this! Where is the score? Where has he taken it?***

  “Don’t know, don’t care. We’re going to finish this, Lecter. We’re going to bring this back to the Last Night of the Proms, and you’re going to make all your little friends go away.”

  Somehow I manage to flip the page without smearing blood all over it.

  ***I’ve won, you know.*** The voice in my head bleeds menace. ***Eat them all.***

  “If you eat the audience, I can promise you an eternity of torment. The Auditors won’t stop me: you can go too far, you know.”

  Before me, the audience sway gently. One by one, they begin to raise their arms. I don’t dare to hope: they’re possessed, after all. This might just be Lecter directing them to act in unison. But I feel his attention drifting from me; no, something is wrong. Something I didn’t anticipate. But what?

  At first I think the stage lights are coming up. But then I realize the shadow of my legs stretching out before me is being cast from a single source, directly behind me rather than overhead. I turn to face the light and falter
, recover, then force myself to keep playing even though I desperately want to flee.

  ***Carcosa,*** Lecter tells me. ***Where the King in Yellow waits.***

  It’s a gate; circular, perhaps five meters in diameter, its rim burning with a pale limelight fire as it stretches across the stage in front of the organist’s pit. Beyond it I see a shadowy stage, dreadfully familiar rows of cracked stone seats rising up in the amphitheater beyond, other performers on stage, white-shrouded, their features invisible as they dance and sway to inaudible music performed at the command of one who has not yet come.

  With a barely audible sigh, the first rank of the possessed audience collapse in windrows, their glowing eyes simultaneously extinguished. The ward I wear around my neck stings my skin, heating up painfully. The gate ripples, then firms up—

  “Mo!” A shrill voice shouts behind me. “Hold on!”

  I stare at the gate, horrified, as the bubbling laughter and triumph of the strings rises from between my fingers and my nerveless hands continue to pull notes from the white violin without any conscious volition on my part. All I can do is watch as Lecter rips the life from bodies by the thousand, pouring it into the opening he’s carved in spacetime. I can feel something else on the other side of the gate respond, a dreadful sense of recognition as an echo of Lecter’s attention turns my way. I want to stop my hands moving, but they won’t do what I command. Is this my fault? Part of me wonders as I fail to make the music stop before the thing on the other side answers the call of its smallest part, the fingernail scraping bound in bone that is Lecter—

  Something slams into me from behind, throwing me bodily off the top of the piano. For a split second I’m falling, but then I land and someone cushions my collapse. In a blurring moment I’m surrounded by Bee, interposing her hands between my elbows, knees, head, and floor. Somehow I’m still holding the violin in one hand and the bow in the other: still glowing blue-green, so intense that they leave after-images when I glance at them.

  “What,” I manage to say, then my arms are trying to raise the instrument and set bow to string, but it’s really hard to play the fiddle when your shoulders give a painful wrench and your wrists are suddenly handcuffed.