Rhesus Chart (9780698140288)

by Stross, Charles

  Fuck it, she always was better than me at administrative/managerial maneuvering. As witness her success in leveraging the fallout from our out-falling to get herself semi-permanently out-placed to a company where she probably earns more in a month than I take home in a year.

  I am certainly not stupid enough to insist on blowing the whistle on her little white lie about the V-word when a fang fucker—okay, a temporarily photophobic math PhD with the strength of a rabid grizzly bear—is resting his hands on my shoulder as I countersign the necessary paperwork to certify that said fang fucker is One Of Our People. For whatever value of “people” you choose to use. (In any case, in the Laundry we tend to take a rather looser definition of the word than is the norm elsewhere.)

  Here’s the situation, as I understand it at this point:

  Mhari may have a history of periodically going off the deep end and throwing boots at my head, but she was never an idiot. She worked for the Laundry full-time on the admin side for two or three years before her sideways shift into investment banking. She knows exactly how the Laundry goes about dealing with outbreaks. And she knows that our three priorities are the three Cs: Containment, Confidentiality, and Capabilities. We contain outbreaks, maintain confidentiality, and enhance our capabilities. The Scrum’s new and fascinating breakthrough is certainly an enhanced capability so she knew that as long as she could maintain confidentiality and do something to contain it, she could wrap it all up in a bow (with the right forms, filled out in triplicate and signed in blood) and hand them over to HR. And as soon as she realized she could talk about us to Oscar—the confidentiality geas apparently doesn’t work too well on people who’ve contracted her unfortunate condition—she briefed him, called up her contacts in HR, and set all the wheels in motion to position her team on the inside of the tent pissing out, rather than vice versa. At which point the outbreak of K syndrome that sucked me into searching out the Scrum stopped being an external threat to be addressed and turned into a fucking inside job. Which neatly explains why my warrant card didn’t work on Alex: as a barely-across-the-threshold new employee he was nevertheless permitted to see it for what it was: the geas on our ID cards doesn’t affect our own people.

  And yes, in case you were wondering, this is my angry-and-disgusted face with egg dripping down it . . .

  9.

  COMMITTEE PROCESSES

  THERE ARE CLUBS, AND THEN THERE ARE CLUBS.

  Back in the eighteenth century (and even earlier) London didn’t have cafés, restaurants, or hotels, as such: it had coffee shops, and drinking dens, and a plethora of coaching houses and inns—but these were not places where gentlemen of quality might dine together in polite company, or drink, or sleep. To address the needs of the nobs (principally: somewhere to socialize, eat, drink, and sleep without being bothered by the raucous lower orders), some of their lordships established discreet clubs. They purchased buildings, hired staff, and acquired the habit of using them as a home from home in the big city.

  Today, the gentleman’s club is undergoing something of a revival. Over the years many of its functions were usurped by hotels and restaurants—and unlike a particularly exclusive club, you can find chain hotels and restaurants in every large city. But the club is by no means extinct, and London still harbors dozens of them, at least one of which has been in existence since the late seventeenth century.

  One notable tradition, upheld by many of the stuffier clubs, is that discussions of a business or professional nature are strictly forbidden. So an astute observer might be intrigued to see Sir David Finch, director of quantitative trading at a prominent London-headquartered merchant bank, sitting down for dinner at a table for two in the great eating room at White’s on St. James’s Street. Sir David is not actually a member of the club—although he’s eminently clubbable—but is here as a guest of his host, a fellow known to those of the current membership who pay attention to him as “Old George.”

  It’s not immediately obvious why he might carry that nickname; Old George certainly doesn’t look ancient. Perhaps he’s a well-preserved sixty, or a mature-looking forty. If you asked the club’s membership secretary at the right stage in the executive’s life cycle he might reminisce about Old George’s striking resemblance to an even older Old George, who had relinquished his membership the year that the New Old George was proposed. But you’d have to go back beyond living memory to find out whether Old Old George was in fact the successor to an even Older Old Old George. And who would ever bother to do that? Suffice to say that the club has, for nearly two centuries, quietly harbored a member called Old George who appears to be somewhere between forty and sixty years of age and who may or may not be the same person.

  Sir David and Old George dine in subdued, if slightly tense silence—business must be deferred until stomachs have been filled, but Sir David is nevertheless curious as to the reason for this summons. So they chat quietly (Old George has an eye for the horses, and Sir David, despite not being a turf man, is well-briefed) and steadily work through soup and mains and a bottle of claret. Until finally Old George pushes back his plate (Sir David has already finished, but Old George eats slowly, cutting his salmon steak and vegetables into small portions and chewing them with bovine deliberation) and, leaning against the back of his chair, stares at Sir David with eyes slightly sunken beneath beetled and slightly unkempt eyebrows. “I gather there have been some exciting developments in your branch, Sir David. Can you tell me about them, or is it still super-hush-hush?”

  “Well I, ah, that is to say—” Sir David stares back, then glances around. “I think.” Another glance. “Are we in trustworthy company?”

  Old George smiles thinly. “Nobody around here ever pays me any attention. The truth flies from your lips to my ears, and no further.” He idly picks up the dessert fork—as yet unused—and raps it on the table. Not a single head turns. “You see.”

  “Um.” Sir David dabs at his lips with his napkin. “In that case, well. As you know, nine months ago I authorized the formation of a research group, operated by Oscar Menendez on an arms-reach basis—it’s established as a limited company, owned by the bank but notionally separate—to investigate possible applications of the new area of mathematics research you were kind enough to recommend to me for quantitative trading analysis. A couple of weeks ago Oscar reported that his team have made some sort of breakthrough in group theory. This higher mathematics might as well be magic to me, I’m afraid. If you want to know more, I can procure a copy of the research material for you. But in any case, they’ve established a new technique for running ahead of the market without using inside information or doing anything else that might violate current exchange regulations. In view of his report, we discussed and then authorized the establishment of a modest investment fund for his group to operate for six months on a pilot basis—”

  Old George nods to himself affably enough as Sir David rattles along. Sir David, for his part, is increasingly confident that this is the object of George’s enquiry and that George is content to absorb the offering put before him. Old George is, after all, if not a board member then at the very least a major investor, perhaps best described as a sleeping partner: he, or his friends and proxies, control enough equity in the bank to light a fire under the feet of the board at the AGM if they are displeased with the management of their assets. Sir David is not directly accountable to Old George, but nobody to whom he is accountable will find fault with his disclosure to this very important shareholder. So as Sir David winds down he smiles hopefully as he looks to Old George for a sign of absolution. “It’s an absolute certainty that this is going to net us a bump in the first quarter bottom line next year. Which can’t be bad, eh?”

  Old George nods once more. “Sir David, I am sure that our investment stance is safe in your hands. But, just to be sure, if I may make a suggestion? I would like you to invite Mr. Menendez and his managers to an off-site meeting, somewhere outdoors, between t
he hours of ten a.m. and three o’clock in the afternoon. And I would appreciate it if you or your staff would immediately inform me of their response.”

  “Really? I—” Sir David’s gaze is arrested by the intensity of Old George’s stare. He dry-swallows. “Yes, sir. Of course. Is there anything else?”

  “Not for now, I think.” Old George looks around, attracting the attention of a waiter. “Perhaps I could interest you in a dessert . . . ?”

  • • •

  I SLINK BACK TO THE NEW ANNEX AT ABOUT 10 P.M. WITH MY tail between my legs, to check my various bits of hardware back into Harry the Horse’s toy chest and deliver an accounting of myself to the irate managers on overtime who are waiting in Briefing Room 201.

  Except, they’re not there. The bastards have all gone home, leaving me a terse email instructing me to show up tomorrow at nine sharp for the inevitable circular firing squad that is the After-Action Debrief/Lessons Learned meeting, wherein we will play pass-the-parcel with a blame bomb until it explodes, spraying shit in the lap of whoever can most plausibly be credited with causing the fuck-up. Which, in this case, almost certainly means me.

  How the fuck was I supposed to know that Mhari of all people was already in the loop and wrapping up the highly suspicious outbreak of algorithmically induced dementia? What is this I don’t even, as they say on the planet Reddit. I thought we—okay, her colleagues in HR—fired her sorry ass a decade ago . . . well, reassigned her to the inactive list, bound her to silence, and gave her a pointed shove down the greasy out-placement playground slide.

  But there’s no getting around it. The key facts are:

  While furtling around with my data mining project I identified a heinous hotspot of horrible brain-eating nastiness located right on our doorstep

  One of our medical liaison experts confirmed that it wasn’t your regular strain of Krantzberg syndrome . . .

  . . . But it wasn’t CJD, Kuru, New Variant CJD (aka Mad Cow Disease), or any other known prion disorder

  I inspected the latest victim, confirmed that it was something related to K syndrome, and dropped in on her place of work . . .

  . . . Whereupon a pencil-necked maths nerd (not unlike my younger self) proved to be immune to some of my basic tools—including my junior league Eater of Souls mojo—bushwhacked me with some help from his dental hypertrophy support group, and dragged me into what looks like an external black op being orchestrated by my Ex–GF From Hell who doesn’t work here anymore (except apparently when she wants to)

  I mean, what the fuck? What the fucking fuck?

  I check out and go home in a buzzing haze of exhaustion and cognitive dissonance, not to mention fear and loathing. I’m too tired to safely use the back way—a branch line of the old nineteenth-century Necropolitan Line, long since turned into a bike trail, that gives pedometers a nervous breakdown and lets me cover the six kilometers to home (according to Google maps) in about two klicks, as long as I don’t mind an occasional haunting. Instead, I splash out on a taxi and slump in the back, trying my hardest to ignore the world.

  Tomorrow’s going to be a bad day. I can tell.

  • • •

  WE NOW INTERRUPT YOUR SCHEDULED VIEWING TO BRING YOU AN important public safety announcement:

  This is Bob speaking, in his capacity as your humble narrator. It’s really a bad sign when you begin talking about yourself in the second person, isn’t it? But I’m afraid I need to break in at this point and disrupt the continuity of my narrative by explaining some uncomfortable truths that only really became clear to me a few weeks after the dust settled from the events described in the RHESUS POSITIVE EPSILON file, which is to say, this document.

  Luckily we live in the age of the word processor, which makes it trivially easy for me to go back and insert additional material that I have determined is not classified above your level (if you’re reading this without scorching your eyebrows off) and that you will need to be aware of in order to make sense of this utter clusterfuck. And you really do need to understand what went wrong in RHESUS POSITIVE EPSILON, if only to ensure that it doesn’t happen to you.

  So wake up and pay attention now:

  • • •

  THE FIRST LAW OF VAMPIRISM IS THAT EVERYBODY KNOWS vampires don’t exist.

  It therefore follows that anyone who realizes that vampires exist is either a vampire, or dead. (Or is a member of staff with RHESUS POSITIVE EPSILON clearance, but that’s another matter.)

  Let me rewind:

  Forget Dracula. Forget Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse and Varney the Vampire and Lestat and, oh, everything you think you know about vampires.

  (Except for Desmodus rotundus and Vampyroteuthis infernalis and Goldman Sachs—they’re all real.)

  Almost everything in the pop culture lexicon of vampirism is basically fiction—and fiction is the art of telling entertaining lies for money. Whereas what we’re discussing here is something else. Here in the real world of applied computational demonology and undead alien squid-gods without investment portfolios, we’re totally down with walking corpses. (If you don’t believe me, go argue the case with the Night Shift.) But vampires in the fictional mode—intelligent super-strong blood-sucking walking corpses who hang out in goth nightclubs and look incredibly sexy—don’t exist.

  Am I shattering your illusions yet?

  Having said that much, what we do in the Laundry centers on the practice of setting up a sympathetic link between complex computational systems in this universe and another elsewhere in the multiverse, mediated via the platonic realm of pure mathematics. We invite useful entities to poke their pseudopodia through a hole in reality, then we grab them and set them to work.

  Now, vampires:

  They start out as ritual magicians, thinking furious blue soundscapes in their minds until they invoke something. Which sticks around and, shall we say, gives them certain powers. It’s a symbiote, in other words, not a regular parasite. As long as they feed it, it stays happy and gives them a laundry list of handy tools. Super-strength: check. Good night-vision: check. Longevity: check. You-gotta-believe-me charisma: check. Good skin tone: check. A tendency to burst into flames if exposed to intense ultraviolet light . . . well, there are always drawbacks. But the important takeaway point is that they’re not walking corpses. They’re real live human beings, albeit immune to soul-eating (whether by me or by the feeders in the night), just like the people whose blood they get off on drinking . . .

  . . . Although the hosts don’t stay human for long, once the V syndrome symbiotes use the sympathetic link the blood meal provides to latch onto their gray matter and chew holes in it.

  You can’t catch vampirism from a vampire’s bite: all you can catch from it is a horrible lingering death. It can sometimes take up to six months for a host to die of V syndrome. But if too many symbiotes snack from the same juice bar, the deterioration takes off like a forest fire. That’s why the Scrum triggered the Tower Hamlets spike. If it was just one vampire, feeding on one victim, we might never have noticed. We might have mistaken it for part of the constant background rate of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

  Vampirism is, thankfully, extremely rare. Traditionally it took a ritual magician of some power, performing a major invocation that pushed back the frontier of the art, to attract the attention of the V syndrome symbiotes. And he or she would usually last until the first sunrise—either by accident or design. Most non-psychopathic practitioners who realize what they’ve become recognize the side effects and their likely fate immediately. They commit suicide rather than inflicting the cost of their survival on others, or pay the hideous price of abstinence.

  Which is why most long-term surviving vampires are psychopaths.

  What are the traits of a successful vampire, a long-term survivor?

  Well, they have to be a conscienceless killer, willing to accept the slow, cruel destruction of othe
rs’ lives to fuel their own continual existence.* They’d have to be wealthy in order to finance the regular changes of identity necessary to conceal their longevity, and to buy the immunity from scrutiny that the eccentricity of their lifestyle demands. They’d have to be very intelligent and ruthlessly dedicated to keeping their existence a secret, because they are by definition a serial killer: one who can go no more than six months between victims. And they’re a ritual magician of considerable power who is now immune to K syndrome parasites, the main brake on the ambitions of such practitioners.

  (Speaking of victims, you can forget the night clubs and glamour. Real vampires prey on the lonely, the elderly, and the unloved. You might find poor ones working the night shift at a hospice, or befriending widows at a bingo hall. Rich ones are more likely to cruise homeless runaways, offering them a meal and cash in return for a night’s sexual exploitation, only for the victim to wake up in a small bedroom with double glazing and a door that locks on the outside, fed by staff who never speak. Real vampires seek the ones who nobody will ever miss.)

  Because of the vile secret of their long existence, if a vampire becomes aware of the existence of another vampire, their first response is to kill it with fire. (Consider: if they learned its nature, then other people might do so. And if the common people ever realize that vampires exist, it will be a very short time indeed before naked noonday identity parades are required by law.) Only if they fail to assassinate their rival and defuse the deadly existential threat of exposure will they even consider communicating with it as an equal—and even then, the only subject important enough to require joint action is the elimination of threats to their collective security.

  Which is why everybody knows vampires don’t exist.

  Except for us. (And the Scrum, who didn’t get the memo.)

  So congratulations; you’re now a target!