The Atrocity Archives

by Charles Stross

  I haven't had to chase any strangers out of my bed yet, but with Mhari around I keep wondering when it'll happen. The worst of it is, I don't want to just cut things dead; I'd rather she stopped playing games than she stopped seeing me. Perhaps it's self-deception, but I think we could make things work. Maybe.

  I'm in the shower cubicle washing my hair when I hear the door open. "I do not appreciate hearing about your one-night stands," I say, eyes closed to avoid the sting of shampoo. "I don't understand why the fuck you hang around me when you're obviously so eager to find someone else. But will you please leave me alone for a bit?"

  "Oops, sorry," says Pinky, and closes the door.

  He's waiting on the landing when I finish in the bathroom; we studiously avoid each other's eyes. "Uh, it's okay to go into your room," he volunteers. "She's gone out."

  "Oh good."

  He hurries after me as I head downstairs. "She asked me to have a word with you," he calls breathlessly.

  "That's fine," I say distantly. "Just as long as she isn't asking you to share my bed."

  "She says you need to check out the alt.polyamory FAQ," he says, and cringes.

  I switch the kettle on and sit down. "Do you really think I have a problem?" I ask. "Or does Mhari have a problem?"

  He glances around, trapped. "You have incompatible lifestyle choices?" he ventures.

  The kettle hisses like an angry snake. "Very good. Incompatible lifestyle choices is such a fucking civilised way of putting it."

  "Bob, do you think she might be doing this to get your attention?"

  "There are good ways and bad ways to get my attention. Whacking on my ego with a crowbar will get my attention, sure, but it's not going to leave me well disposed to the messenger." I pour more hot water into my mug of tea, then stand up and rummage in the cupboard. Ah, it's right where I left it. I upend a generous dollop of Wray and Nephew's overproof Jamaican rum into the mug and sniff: brown sugar crossed with white lightning. "The male ego is a curious thing. It's about the size of a small continent but it's extremely brittle. Drink?"

  Pinky sits down opposite me, looking as if he's sharing the kitchen table with an unexploded bomb. "Why not look on the bright side?" he says, holding out a Coke glass for the rum.

  "There's a bright side?"

  "She keeps coming back to you," he says. "Maybe she's doing it to hurt herself?"

  "To–" I bite off the snide reply I was working on. When Mhari gets depressed she gets depressed: I've seen the scars. "I'll have to think about that one," I say.

  "Well, then." Pinky looks pleased with himself. "Doesn't that look better? She's doing it because she's depressed and hates herself, not because there's anything wrong with you. It's not a reflection on your virile manhood, you big hunk of beefcake. Go get yourself a one nighter of your own and she'll have to make her mind up what she wants."

  "Is that in the FAQ?" I ask.

  "I dunno; I don't pay much attention to breeder reproductive rituals," he says, fingering his moustache.

  "Thank you, Pinky," I say heavily. He does a little wave and bow, then tips the contents of his glass down his throat. I spend the next minute or two helping save him from choking, and then we have another wee dram. The rest of the afternoon becomes a blur, but when I wake up in bed the next morning I have a stunning hangover, a vague memory of drunkenly talking things over with Mhari for hours on end until it blew up into a flaming row, and I'm on my own.

  Situation normal: all fucked up.

  * * * *

  Two days later, I am booked into an orientation and Objectivity seminar at the Dustbin. Only God and Bridget–and possibly Boris, though he won't say anything–know why I'm booked into an O&O course three days after getting off the plane, but something dire will probably happen if I don't turn up.

  The Dustbin isn't part of the Laundry, it's regular civil service, so I try to dig up a shirt that isn't too crumpled, and a tie. I own two ties–a Wile E. Coyote tie, and a Mandelbrot set tie that's particularly effective at inducing migraines–and a sports jacket that's going a bit threadbare at the cuffs. Don't want to look too out of place, do I? Someone might ask questions, and after the auto-da-fe I've just been through I do not want anyone mentioning my name in Bridget's vicinity for the next year. I'm halfway to the tube station before I remember that I forgot to shave, and I'm on the train before I notice that I'm wearing odd socks, one brown and one black. But what the hell, I made the effort; if I actually owned a suit I'd be wearing it.

  The Dustbin is our name for a large, ornate postmodernist pile on the south bank of the Thames, with green glass curtain walls and a big, airy atrium and potted Swiss cheese plants everywhere there isn't a security camera. The Dustbin is occupied by a bureaucratic organisation famous for its three-hour lunches and impressive history of KGB alumni. This organisation is persistently and mistakenly referred to as MI5 by the popular media. As anyone in the business knows, MI5 was renamed DI5 about thirty years ago; like those Soviet-era maps that misplaced cities by about fifty miles in order to throw American bombers off course, DI5 is helpfully misnamed in order to direct freedom of information requests to the wrong address. (As it happens there is an organisation called MI5; it's in charge of ensuring that municipal waste collection contracts are outsourced to private bidders in a fair and legal manner. So when your Freedom of Information Act writ comes back saying they know nothing about you, they're telling the truth.)

  The Dustbin cost approximately two hundred million pounds to construct, has a wonderful view of the Thames and the Houses of Parliament, and is full of rubbish that smells. Whereas we loyal servants of the crown and defenders of the human race against nameless gibbering horrors from beyond spacetime have to labour on in a Victorian rookery of cabbage-coloured plasterboard walls and wheezing steam pipes somewhere in Hackney. That's because the Laundry used to be part of an organisation called SOE–indeed, the Laundry is the sole division of SOE to have survived the bureaucratic postwar bloodletting of 1945–and the mutual loathing between SIS (aka DI6) and SOE is of legendary proportions.

  I turn up at the Dustbin and enter via the tradesman's entrance, a windowless door in a fake-marble tunnel near the waterfront. A secretary who looks like she's made of fine bone china waves me through the biometric scanner, somehow manages to refrain from inhaling in my presence (you'd think I hailed from the Pestilence Division at Porton Down), and finally ushers me into a small cubicle furnished with a hard wooden bench (presumably to make me feel at home). The inner door opens and a big, short-haired guy in a white shirt and black tie clears his throat and says, "Robert Howard, this way please." I follow him and he drops one of those silly badge-chains over my head then pushes me through a metal detector and gives me a cursory going over with a wand, airport security style. I grit my teeth. They know exactly who I am and who I work for: they're just doing this to make a point.

  He relieves me of my Leatherman multitool, my palmtop computer, my Maglite torch and pocket screwdriver set, the nifty folding keyboard, the MP3 walkman, the mobile phone, and a digital multimeter and patch cable set I'd forgotten about. "What's all this, then?" he asks.

  "Do you guys ever go anywhere without your warrant card and handcuffs? Same difference."

  "I'll give you a receipt for these," he says disapprovingly, and shoves them in a locker. "Stand on this side of the red line for now." I stand. Something about him makes my built-in police detector peg out; Special Branch acting as uniformed commissionaires? Yeah, right. "Present this on your way out to collect your stuff. You may now cross the red line. Follow me, do not, repeat not, open any closed doors or enter any areas where a red light is showing, and don't speak to anyone without my say-so."

  I follow my minder through a maze of twisty little cubicle farms, all alike, then up three floors by elevator, then down a corridor where the Swiss cheese plants are turning yellow at the edges from lack of daylight, and finally to the door of what looks like a classroom. "You can talk now; everyone else in this cla
ss is cleared to at least your level," he says. "I'll come collect you at fifteen hundred hours. Meanwhile, go anywhere you want on this level–there's a canteen where you'll have lunch, toilet's round that corner there–but don't leave this floor under any circumstances."

  "What if there's a fire?" I ask.

  He looks at me witheringly: "We'd arrest it. I'll see you at three o'clock," he says. "And not before."

  I enter the classroom, wondering if teacher is in yet.

  "Ah, Bob, nice to see you. Have a seat. Hope you found us okay?"

  I get a sinking feeling: it's Nick the Beard. "I'm fine, Nick," I say. "How's Cheltenham?" Nick is some sort of technical officer from CESG, based out at Cheltenham along with the other wiretap folks. He drops round the Laundry every so often to make sure all our software is licensed and we're only running validated COTS software purchased via approved suppliers. Which is why, whenever we get word that he's about to visit, I have to run around rebooting servers like crazy and loading the padded-cell environments we keep around purely to placate CESG so they don't blacklist our IT processes and get our budget lopped off at the knees. Despite that, Nick is basically okay, which is why I get the sinking feeling; I don't enjoy treating nice guys like they're agents of Satan or Microsoft salesmen.

  "They moved me out of the hole on the map two months ago," he says. "I'm based here full-time now. Miriam's got a job in the city, so we're thinking of moving. Have you met Sophie? I think she's running this course today."

  "Don't think so. Who else is coming? What do you know about, um, Sophie? Nobody even showed me a course synopsis; I'm not sure why I'm here."

  "Oh, well then." He rummages in his brief case and pulls out a sheet of paper, hands it to me: Orientation and Objectivity 120.4: Overseas Liaison.

  I start reading: This seminar is intended to provide inductees with the correct frame of mind for conducting negotiations with representatives of allied agencies. Common pitfalls are discussed with a view to inculcating a culture of best practice. A proactive approach to integrating operational agreements with extraterritorial parties is deprecated, and correct protocol for requesting diplomatic assistance is introduced. Status: completion of this seminar and associated coursework is mandatory for foreign postings in Category 2 (nonallied) positions.

  "Ah, really," I say faintly. "How interesting." (Thank you, Bridget.)

  "All I wanted was to visit the factory that supplies our PCs out in Taiwan," Nick mutters darkly. "All part of our ISO certification cycle, assuring that they're following best industry practices in motherboard assembly and testing . . ."

  The door opens. "Ah, Nick! Nice to see you! How's Miriam?"

  It's a new arrival. He's the very image of a schoolteacher: a thin, weedy-looking guy with big horn-rimmed spectacles and thinning hair. Except, when he positively leaps into the room, he gives the impression of being made of springs. Nick obviously knows him: "She's fine, fine–and how are you yourself? Uh, Bob, have you met Alan?"

  "Alan?" I stick out a hand tentatively. "With what department? If I'm allowed to ask?"

  "Umm–" He pumps my hand up and down then looks at me oddly as I nurse my bruised fingertips–he's got a grip like a vice. "Probably not, but that's okay," he announces. "Let's not get carried away, eh!" Over his shoulder to Nick: "Hillary's fine, but she's having a devil of a time with the guns. We're going to need a new cupboard soon, and the rental in Maastricht is horrible."

  Guns? "Alan and I belong to the same shooting club," Nick explains diffidently. "With all the fuss a few years ago we had to either move our guns out of the country to somewhere where it's legal to own them, or turn them in. Most of us turned ours in and use the club facilities, but Alan's a holdout."

  "Handguns?"

  "No, long arms. That's recreational shooting, by the way. I'm just an amateur but Alan takes it a bit more seriously–trained for the Olympics a way back."

  "What's the club?" I ask.

  "Damned impudent infringement of our civil rights," Alan huffs. "Not trusting their own citizens to own automatic weapons: a bad sign. But we do what we can. Artists' Rifles, by the way. Drop in if you're ever in the neighbourhood, ha ha. So we're just waiting for Sophie now."

  "Could be worse." Nick ambles over to the table beside the door and prods at what looks like a thermos jug. "Ah, coffee!" I kick myself mentally for not noticing it first.

  "You going anywhere?" asks Alan.

  "Just back." I shrug. "Didn't even know this course existed."

  "Business or pleasure?"

  "Milk or sugar, Alan?"

  "Business. I wish it had been pleasure. They didn't brief me and nothing was the way I expected it–"

  "Ha ha. Milk, no sugar. Typical Laundry turf war, by the sound of it. So your boss's boss's first cousin sent you for remedial classes, stay late after school, dunce cap in the corner, the usual rigmarole?"

  "That's about it. Hey, pour me one too?"

  "Seen it a dozen times before," offers Nick. "Nobody ever thinks to tell anyone when they're expected–" I yawn. "You tired?"

  "Still jetlagged, thanks." I blow on my coffee.

  The door opens and a woman in a brown tweed suit–Sophie, I presume–walks in. "Hello, everybody," she says. "Alan, Nick–you must be Bob." A brief grin. "Glad you're all here. Today we're going to go over some basic material by way of reminding you of the proper protocol for dealing with foreign agencies while posted abroad on neutral or friendly but not allied territory." She plonks a bulging briefcase down on the desk at the front of the classroom.

  "If I can just confirm–all three of you are due to fly out to California in the next few days, is that right?"

  Uh-oh. "I'm just back," I say.

  "Oh dear. You've done the 120.4 course before, then? This is just a refresher?"

  I take a deep breath. "I can honestly say that the fact that this seminar exists is news to both myself and my immediate supervisors. I think that's why I'm here now."

  "Oh well!" She smiles brightly. "We'll soon see about that. Just as long as your trip was productive and nothing went wrong! This course is about procedures that should only be necessary in event of an emergency, after all." She digs into the case and hands us each a hefty wedge of course notes. "Shall we begin?"

  * * * *

  It's been six weeks since I was certified fit for active duty, and three weeks since I came back from Santa Cruz in business class with a bandage around my head. Bridget has had her little joke, I've suffered through about two weeks of seminars intended to bolt, padlock, and weld shut the stable door in the wake of the equine departure, and I'm slowly going out of my skull with boredom.

  For my sins I've been posted to a pokey little office in the Dansey Wing of Service House–little more than a broom closet off a passageway under the eaves, roof wreathed in hissing steam pipes painted black for no obvious reason. There's a valuable antique that Services claims is a computer network server, and when I'm not nursing it from one nervous breakdown to the next I am expected to file endless amounts of paperwork and prepare a daily abstract based on several classified logs and digests that cross my desk. The abstract is forwarded to some senior executives, then shredded by a guy in a blue suit. In between, I'm expected to make the tea. I feel like a twenty-six-year-old office boy. Overqualified, naturally. To add insult to injury, I have a new job title: Junior Private Secretary.

  I would, I think, be right out of my skull and halfway down the road by now, chased by men in white coats wielding oversized butterfly nets, were it not for the fact that the word "secretary" means something very different from its normal usage in the steamy little world of the Laundry. Y'see, before the 1880s, a secretary was a gentleman's assistant: someone who kept the secrets. And there are secrets to be kept, here in the Arcana Analysis Section. In fact, there's a whole bloody wall of filing cabinets full of 'em right behind my cramped secretarial chair. (Some wag has plastered a Post-it note on one of the drawers: THE TRUTH IS IN HERE, SOMEWHERE.) I'm learning
things all the time, and apart from the bloody filing work, not to mention the coffee pot from hell and the network server from heck, it's mostly okay. Except for Angleton. Did I mention Angleton?

  I'm standing in for Angleton's junior private secretary, who is on sabbatical down at the funny farm or taking a year out doing an MBA or something. And therein lies my problem.

  "Mr. Howard!" That's Angleton, calling me into the inner sanctum.

  I stick my head round his door. "Yes, boss?"

  "Enter." I enter. His office is large, but feels cramped; every wall–it's windowless–is shelved floor-to-ceiling in ledgers. They're not books, but microfiche binders: each of them contains as much data as an encyclopaedia. His desk looks merely odd at first sight, an olive-drab monolith bound with metal strips, supporting the TV-sized hood of a fiche reader. It's only when you get close enough to it to see the organlike pedals and the cardhopper on top that, if you're into computational archaeology, you realise that Angleton's desk is an incredibly rare, antique Memex–an information appliance out of 1940s CIA folklore.

  Angleton looks up at me as I enter, his face a blue-lit washout of text projected from the Memex screen. He's nearly bald, his chin is two sizes two small for his skull, and his domed scalp gleams like bone. "Ah, Howard," he says. "Did you find the material I requested?"

  "Some of it, boss," I say. "Just a moment." I duck out into my office and pick up the hulking dusty tomes that I've carried up from the stacks, two basements and a fifty-metre elevator ride below ground level. "Here you are. Wilberforce Tangent and Opal Orange."

  He takes the tomes without comment, opens the first of them, and starts sliding card-index sized chunks of microfilm into the Memex input hopper. "That will be all, Howard," he says superciliously, dismissing me.

  I grit my teeth and leave Angleton to his microfilm. I once made the mistake of asking why he uses such an antique. He stared at me as if I'd just waved a dead fish under his nose, then said, "You can't read Van Eck radiation off a microfilm projector." (Van Eck radiation is the radio noise emitted by a video display; with sophisticated receivers you can pick it up and eavesdrop on a computer from a distance.) Back then I hadn't learned to keep my mouth shut around him: "Yeah, but what about Tempest shielding?" I asked. That's when he sent me off to the stacks for the first time, and I got lost for two hours on sublevel three before I was rescued by a passing vicar.