Rhesus Chart (9780698140288)

by Stross, Charles

  “Yes, that’s certainly true,” says Pete. To Alex’s surprise he seems to have relaxed somewhat. “We’ve met, haven’t we? In, um, Archives? You’re Basil, um, I’m sorry, Bob didn’t introduce us properly—”

  “No, no, that’s quite all right,” says the ancient archivist. “How do you take your tea? Milk and sugar?”

  “Milk, no sugar,” says Pete. He nudges Alex.

  “Oh! No milk, one sugar.” Alex looks at the door they entered through, then back at the elderly Basil. Woman with gun, or elderly man with teapot. Nostrils flare. “You’re a vampire!” he exclaims, then bites his tongue.

  “Don’t be silly, vampires don’t exist,” Basil retorts, then sniffs. He finishes pouring the tea. “Unless we’re talking about the sanguinary curse that adheres to inanimate objects, of course, the organization has several of those in inventory; but that’s another story. I could have said it takes one to know one, but then we would be tacitly admitting that vampires do exist, and then we’d have to do what vampires always do when they meet.” His hands shake, Alex notices, but his voice is steady and his speech is clear and unhesitating.

  “What do—would—vampires do when they meet?” asks Alex.

  “You’ve seen Highlander—there can be only one.” An expression, hard to read in the twilight, crosses Basil’s face. “No? You haven’t seen Highlander? I must confess, the talkies are my one vice—I picked it up in the early 1920s and can’t seem to shake it. Vampires kill, lad. It’s in their nature. They can’t help it; if they don’t kill, they die horribly. It is common lore among their kind that the public, were they aware of vampires, would mandate naked noonday parades and shoot everyone who didn’t turn up. Or something like that. So a vampire who allows himself to be recognized as such is a clear and present danger to all other vampires. More tea, Vicar?”

  Alex stares at Basil. The gears in his head are whirring as they mesh at high speed, building a Babbage-engine picture of a proposition in predicate calculus. “Why are you breaking the rules?” he finally asks, taking the mug.

  A wry smile creeps across Basil’s face.

  “If you don’t need me, I’ll just be leaving,” Pete suggests, sidling sideways towards the door. Evidently he’s decided that he’d rather take his chances with the serial killer outside.

  “No, I think you should stay,” Basil says, affably enough, and Pete lurches to a stop, as if his feet are rooted to the stained concrete floor. “We don’t always kill each other. If we’re evenly matched, we may even leave one another alone: there’s no victor in a fight where everybody dies. To each, his territory. I’m not the only ancient in London, Alex, or even the strongest. But that’s a long story. If I arranged for you to be made, why do you think I would kill you?”

  “But the woman outside—but, but Evan’s dead—”

  “Evan was your colleague, wasn’t he? The, ahum, hipster?”

  Alex nods.

  “He went hunting,” Basil explains. “If he hadn’t gone hunting, he’d still be alive.”

  “Hunting, for—”

  “Hunting for a blood meal. Because he was hungry. Can you feel the hunger, Alex? Can you feel it eating you?” Alex nods, convulsively. “I’ve been reading up on you, you know. Almost everyone’s file ends up in the Archives eventually. I read your Miss Murphy’s folder years ago, and the reports on her progress: saw she’d make an excellent client. If I ever need to dispose of her, I can shut her down with a single anonymous phone call. Mr. Menendez is, shall we say, surplus to requirements, and I have arranged for him to be let go as part of the downsizing. He’s another solitary hunter. We can’t permit that. The others—you, for instance—are promising. If you can follow instructions to the letter, we can work together. I can feed you, you know—safely. It has been a long time since I have had slaves, but I think a Praetorian bodyguard of vampires will suit me nicely during the troubled times to come: CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN and all that. Drink your tea, lad, it’s getting cold.”

  “But—but—” Alex looks at Pete. The vicar is clearly frightened, and is making the most peculiar hunching/crouching motions. After a few seconds Alex realizes that Pete really does think his feet are glued to the floor: it’s as if he’s stuck in a tar pit. “Why am I here?” he finally asks. “If you didn’t bring me here to kill me.” He blinks. “You were in on the Senior Auditor’s meeting. On the inside of his scheme to unearth the vampire in the Laundry . . .”

  Basil nods and puts his mug down. (Alex reads the logo and message on its side: MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY.) “It was inevitable that sooner or later somebody would notice. I could feel the questions beginning, the skepticism slipping. Once everyone moved out of Dansey House it was only a matter of time before the geas I worked into the very stones began to lose its grip on their minds. So I planned for this contingency. There will be a small downsizing in an obscure government department, and the individuals who are most credulous and inclined to believe in the existence of vampires will cease to trouble me. At the same time, a particular thorn in my side—the most dangerously psychotic sorcerer in London, who coincidentally created the lady who greeted you—will be drawn out, removed. I’ve stripped him of his best defenses and maneuvered him into a position where he thinks he has no alternative but to attempt to execute the threat presented by the Laundry. I do not expect him to survive. You’re in the safest place you could possibly be right now, Alex, drinking tea in this warehouse with an ancient and powerful vampire while a vampire hunter stands guard on the door. All you have to do is obey me and you’ll be fine.” Basil peers at Alex. “You are thirsty. Yes?”

  Alex nods again. There is something soothing and reassuring about Basil’s presence, about the knowledge that Alex is in the presence of an ancient and benevolent elder who wishes him only good—if only the ward he wears on the thong around his neck would stop buzzing like an angry wasp.

  “There is lifeblood here,” says Basil. He turns and shuffles slowly towards the far end of the work table; Alex follows him, on the other side. “The MAGIC CIRCLE OF SAFETY public information posters, such as this one here, show how to create a basic protective ward. They were for distribution to the herd, in event of an incursion. However, they are also easily modified with a conductive pencil. Add a simple circuit and they can be activated. Like this one, nearly six feet in diameter. The warded zone is cut off from space and time outside: but you can also use it to stop time from passing inside. There are some, ahem, drawbacks, but if one wants to store something . . . like a packed lunch, to be consumed later . . .”

  And indeed there is a perfect hemisphere of darkness rising from the floor beside the end of the large table, atop a sheet of heavy paper that flops across the concrete: its darkness is so complete that in the twilight, it is almost invisible. Basil gestures at it. “I use this warehouse to store my meals. While they’re in stasis the progressive deterioration caused by the parasite is kept in check. I need to take them out of stasis while I’m drinking, so that they can feed the parasite and the parasite feeds me in turn . . . but it reduces the frequency with which one needs to kill. Reduces the risk of exposure, too. Would you care for a glass? I have a passable O Rhesus Negative on tap, stored in this chart.”

  Alex’s stomach rumbles. Then, as if in sympathy, his phone vibrates.

  “Give that to me.” Basil holds out his hand. As if in a dream, Alex watches himself hand his phablet over. The old man looks at it in distaste. “I see,” he says. “A primitive ward, without the standard organization backdoor. How annoying! How does one—ah.” Alex’s stomach lurches again as Basil removes the back cover and pulls the battery, then tosses the disemboweled phone along the work table. “No interruptions, if you please. Now attend.”

  He bends down, then extends a finger towards a tracery of silver script that circles the base of the stasis field, and smudges out a single character. The dome of darkness disappears. In its place, there is a small wo
oden chair. A young boy, aged perhaps eight, sits in the chair—or rather, is strapped to it with duct tape at wrists and thighs and ankles. He’s cheaply dressed, in scuffed trainers and sweatpants and a hoodie that don’t fit properly, and his head lolls: he doesn’t seem to be aware of his environment. The green head-end of a cannula pokes from the top of his right hand, held in place by surgical tape; a box of syringes sits beneath the chair.

  “He’s sedated, but if he could talk he would tell you that perhaps eighty minutes have passed while he’s been sitting on this chair. His mother sold him to me for two hundred pounds and an ounce of heroin a couple of years ago. She’s dead now, of an overdose. I think I got the better deal.” Basil picks up a 20ml syringe and bends over the boy’s wrist. His extraction is fast and practiced. “Here. Drink. The more time he spends out of stasis, the faster he’ll deteriorate.”

  Alex takes the syringe with nerveless fingers. Behind him, across the warehouse, he can hear Pete retching, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters next to the thirst that has been eating away at his guts. The ward around his neck has stopped buzzing and lies quiescent against his skin, burning hot. He raises the syringe to his lips and squeezes the plunger, overcome by a sense of desire that is erotic in its intensity, turning his knees to jelly as the first drops touch his tongue.

  Blackness. Orgasm. Total loss of control.

  A few seconds pass. Alex realizes he’s lying on the floor. He opens his eyes. He’s fallen over but he feels great. For the first time in weeks he isn’t half-starved, on the edge of perpetual mild nausea. Someone is standing over him.

  “Alex. This is important. Are you awake? Can you hear me, Alex?”

  He tries to nod, then tries to say yes, but what comes out is: “Oh wow.”

  “Good lad! Stand up.”

  Alex rolls over, then pushes himself to his knees.

  “You, Vicar: over here, yes, go to the young boy in the chair. Stand behind him. Bend over, I’m going to reactivate the ward . . .”

  Something out of sight changes, some texture in the background noise, which tells Alex the dome is back in place. And of a sudden, the hunger pangs are back, albeit muted.

  “Alex, ah, good. Stand up straight.” He can feel the force of Basil’s will wrapped around him like a warm blanket, and he feels so grateful he can barely find words to express himself. “Stop trying to think, there’s a good boy. I want you to go and stand by the door. Facing it.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “The door, Alex.” (Dammit, you’re half-starved into idiocy.) “That door. The one you came in through, do you remember?”

  Alex nods.

  “Good. Go and stand by it. If anyone comes through the door, I want you to kill them. It is very important that you kill them.”

  “Must I?”

  “Yes, Alex, you must. Otherwise they will kill you.”

  “But I’ve never—” He shakes. “Need my phone.”

  “Never mind your—wait, your phone? Is there something on it? A weapon?” Alex nods. “All right, you may collect your phone. Then go and stand by the door and kill anybody who comes through it.”

  Alex, full of energy for the first time in days, jumps to obey.

  • • •

  BASIL NORTHCOTE-ROBINSON, STRIPPED OF HIS COFFIN-DODGER cover story, stands revealed as an ancient and powerful vampire, who has been working his insidious will on the organization for half a century without detection.

  But Basil is not omniscient. He has forgotten something. In fact, he has forgotten several somethings, the combined effect of which will undermine his fiendish scheme to use the organization to destroy his greatest rival, while using his greatest rival to snuff out everybody in the organization who knows the truth about vampires.

  For the past century, Basil has lived in England, in the heart of a country riven by two world wars and a grudging retreat from empire. But the retreat from empire ended nearly three decades ago, with the handover of Hong Kong to China.

  Basil does not, for the most part, deal with young people. He experiences them as most pensioners do: as shadowy presences in menacing hoodies who dart and mock from the pavements and slums, fearful images touched up by Daily Mail headline writers and Telegraph editorials. He experiences them mediated through the distorting lens of the silver screen, the nightly drama of the television news broadcast. He is unmarried and has no living relatives that he is aware of. He does not experience them as the larval form of his co-workers. He was born so long ago that he has forgotten what it was like to be a teenager or a young adult male. Metrosexuality is something he reads about in newspaper op-ed rants but doesn’t actually know. And as for geek culture . . .

  Most of the young men of Alex’s age who Basil has known over the past century had undergone military service. If they haven’t carried a gun, they’ve lived through bombing raids. Grew up playing Cowboys and Indians (or Provos and Army). Took a keen interest in things martial.

  Basil is applying these sepia-toned benchmarks of young and virile manhood to Alex, and basing his assumptions of his capabilities upon them. But Alex is a child of the late 1980s, of helicopter parenting and stranger danger and school rides and the Snowdrop Campaign and a blanket ban on handguns. Alex is a brilliant mathematician and promising (if embryonic) applied computational demonologist. But Alex is also a geek who suffers from impostor syndrome and hypochondria to boot, and whose knowledge of handguns was acquired from movies where the stars hold their pistols the wrong way up and obey the laws of Hollywood physics. He is, in short, not exactly the ideal vampire bodyguard.

  He is also prone to overthinking things.

  • • •

  WE ARE DELAYED IN TRAFFIC AGAIN. WHICH MEANS WE ARE now twelve minutes behind our bellwether.

  (I know the arguments for and against having a brick waiting outside the warehouse; let’s just say, the arguments against won. If there’s one thing worse than going up against an ancient and powerful vampire sorcerer with mind-control skills, it’s going up against an ancient and powerful vampire sorcerer with mind-control skills who has noticed you and taken over your eight-man squad of elite special forces soldiers before you arrive.)

  “Orders, Mr. Howard?”

  I rub my forehead. “Wait one.” I call up the police CCTV operations room again. They’ve got a constable monitoring the cameras around the warehouse in real time. “No change notified. One car arrived ninety minutes ago; a woman got out and went inside. Hasn’t left. Then our decoys arrived nine minutes ago and went inside. Monitoring commenced three hours ago; nothing before then, although presumably the security guard showed up for work this morning. So we’re looking at four souls inside: security chap, unidentified female, our two.” I pause.

  “My working assumption is the female is hostile until proven otherwise. She may be a PHANG, or she may be a lamplighter for the adversary. We’re all warded but you should not assume that your wards will work normally around the adversary. Treat with extreme caution; put her down if she presents a threat.”

  I pause again. “Scary, do you prefer to go in through the front door, or use the loading dock and the fire exits? You have tactical control.”

  My ward vibrates briefly, then stops. I glance down at my smartphone, and see the particular app it’s running. (Burning goat’s skull—don’t ask: it’s part of our special occult countermeasures suite.) “Alex’s ward just overloaded and fried. We have contact.”

  “Team alpha, plan two,” announces Scary. (That’s the fire exit.) “Team bravo, plan three.” (That’s the loading bay.) I feel the truck lean forward on its suspension and sway as it takes a bend, then bounce twice, very hard, on speed pillows. “We’re going to park in front of the office door, on top of the bike and the car: stand by for a bumpy landing. Action in thirty seconds.”

  There’s a click in my headphones. “Mr. Howard, if you’d please stay behind us this
time—”

  “Thank you, Sergeant, your advice is noted.” I grit my teeth and close my eyes, forcing my inner eye to open. I can see surprisingly well this way, although what I see is nothing very nice: I have nightmares about using this talent. “You’ll need me to handle the adversary. Once you’ve cleared the way.”

  “Yes, sir.” A hand pats me on the shoulder. Then there’s a violent crunching sound and I’m hurled against my seat belt. Poor bloody Pete, if he gets out of this alive, is going to have one hell of an insurance claim form to fill out. I’ll have to see if I can get the SA to sign off on buying him a replacement scooter, citing necessity . . .

  I pull off my headphones and yank on my helmet in the moment of silence that follows. A gust of cold air hits me in the face as the doors slam. I pull my visor down, release my seat belt, and wait ten seconds as the heavies bail out, then I follow them through the nearest exit, opposite the entrance to the office.

  So I’m standing right behind Sergeant Howe when the door explodes.

  That’s why I survive.

  I register it as a bright flash and a simultaneous ringing in my ears, then I realize I’m lying on my back looking up at the side of the OCCULUS truck. What happened? I wonder as I flail around and try to sit up, then slip on something warm and moist. I can smell shit. Something buzzes in my ears, and then my ward goes off like a hive of bees. I can’t hear properly. I roll to my knees and realize numbly I’m rolling in what’s left of Steve, which means enemy action, so I keep rolling and roll under the OCCULUS truck as I reach for my pistol and realize I can’t find the holster and my bad right arm is stinging like crazy so I open my inner eye fully and the confusion and darkness light up.

  (I will note that Steve Howe wasn’t visible from the office window and wasn’t yet trying to open the door: it just went bang.)

  Walls dissolve. There’s a smoking hole in the front of the warehouse, and a body inside, and another body—live, with a gun, and there’s an unhealthy bluish sheen to it like an oil slick or toxic waste or something. I hear faint shouts, the harsh metallic crack of gunfire. There are more people standing farther inside the building, but the one in the office is advancing and raising a pistol—