Differently Morphous

by Yahtzee Croshaw

  “Bollocks is it a solution. It’s just PR. They make us do it so they can pretend they’ve fixed the problem. No one really cares.”

  “No, you don’t care. Other people care. I imagine the interdimensional sentients you’re blasting would care.”

  “Okay, look, the fluidics had the right idea, didn’t they?” said Victor. “They figured out how to get their intentions across. If a monster can’t be bothered to do enough research to figure out that we wear clothes in this universe, and don’t bite each other’s faces off as a greeting, why is it our fault when things get confused?”

  Adam stared at him, open mouthed. “So we should kill every refugee who comes to the country and doesn’t speak English, should we?”

  “You’re twisting my words again! I’m just saying . . .” Victor’s words died as his flashlight beam fell upon the sight in front of them. “What’s that?”

  The way ahead had been cut off by a collapse centuries ago, and some boards had been put up in front of it as a sort of official surrender to nature. Spread across the floor just in front of the wall was a spectacular display of colorful liquid, like the aftermath of a child getting bored with their chemistry set and seeing what would happen if they mixed everything together.

  In the center of it was a pile of what looked like white sand, surrounded by a ring of greenish-brown sludge that spiked outwards violently, as if trying to escape. The fringes had crisped to an unhealthy black like a poorly cooked fried egg.

  Adam took a step forward, and something crunched under his sneaker. There was more of the white sand, forming a line that went all the way across the passage. Except, now that he could get a closer look, it wasn’t sand.

  “Salt,” he identified aloud.

  “Why have your senses led us to a bunch of salt?” asked Victor dryly. “Do they want fish and chips for lunch?”

  “Victor, I think this is a fluidic,” said Adam, not wanting to get any closer. “I think someone trapped a fluidic here and killed it. With salt.”

  Victor stared at the stain that had once been a sentient creature. Then he shone his flashlight upwards, revealing a large piece of cardboard that had been very recently hung from the boards on the far wall. On it, in the patient, meticulous style of cold, sober premeditation, someone had painted an icon of a hand.

  It was a familiar symbol to both the agents. Up until three months ago, they had seen it almost every day, on the archway that led to the Hand of Merlin’s meeting chamber, in the secret bunker under Westminster Abbey.

  “Let’s make it a long lunch,” said Victor, not looking away from it.

  20

  The Department of Extradimensional Affairs, formerly the Ministry of Occultism, was no longer based in the secret bunker. They had been granted a couple of floors in one of the more modern buildings on Victoria Street, begrudgingly hacked out from the Department of Business.

  Elizabeth Lawrence had fought to the very limits of passive aggression to avoid being given an obvious, important-looking office, to no avail. She had been assigned the largest one, right next to the secretary of state’s. She had attempted to politely ignore it and work in one of the smaller, adjoining offices, but Anderson had strategically disconnected the computers one by one, until Elizabeth was finally forced to work in her intended office, now an island in the middle of a lake of dead monitors.

  She sat supporting her chin on one hand, behind a thoroughly modern white desk that would have made someone twice her size look diminutive. As Richard Danvers entered and took a seat, she addressed the smartphone in front of her. “Say again what you just told me.”

  “We found a dead fluidic in the mine where the targets were hanging out,” said Adam, on speaker. “Someone piled a load of salt onto it.”

  “Could the creatures you were hunting have done it?”

  There was a low muttering in the background. “No, they weren’t sentient. Totally, one hundred percent certain about that; we did the checks. Whoever killed the fluidic trapped it with a line of salt. That’s too smart for the things we just killed.”

  “Surely this becomes a police matter now,” said Danvers, folding his arms.

  “Tell him what else you found,” prompted Elizabeth.

  “They put a sign up above the corpse,” said Adam. “It had the Hand of Merlin symbol on it. Like a sort of signature.”

  Danvers considered this for a moment, then urgently leaned forward. “I’ll send a crew. In the meantime, keep guard over the crime scene and make sure no one finds or disturbs it.”

  “Er . . . keep guard?”

  Elizabeth coughed lightly. “Since you called to inform us of this immediately, Hesketh, you must still be at the crime scene.”

  There was the sound of Victor Casin coughing on something, and of a mug of tea hitting the kind of cheap dining table one might find at a service station café. “Er, yes, right, we’ll guard the—this crime scene we’re at.”

  Elizabeth ended the call, then leaned back and looked to Richard expectantly. It hadn’t escaped her attention that the former Swordkeeper—now Chief Inspector—Danvers had been noticeably less stressed since they had become the new Department and moved to an office more like his natural environment. The moment Adam had mentioned the Hand of Merlin, Richard’s hands had started to quake.

  “What do you think?” asked Elizabeth.

  “I don’t think they really were still at the crime scene,” said Richard guardedly. Elizabeth stared at him until he continued. “What I also don’t think is that the former members of the Hand have formed some kind of underground antimagic terrorist group.”

  “Have you had any contact with your father recently?” said Elizabeth.

  Richard looked her in the eye. “The last I heard, he was building a train set,” he said, through his teeth. “Come on, Elizabeth. The Hand were, and still are, a bunch of confused old men who were only in the Ministry for the secret club and the fine dining.”

  Elizabeth glanced at the door, in case a fully equipped surveillance team had arrived and set up their mikes in the few moments since she had last checked, then leaned in. “We know that, yes. But say we didn’t, and only knew of the Hand of Merlin what the media has said about them. What would we assume from this incident?”

  “We would assume . . . that the Hand may have gone underground to continue their campaign against fluidics.”

  “Precisely. Which is why we need to handle this quietly. If any more scrutiny comes down on the old Ministry, it’s only a matter of time before our prior connection to it is revealed.”

  Richard’s expression hardened. “I understand that, but a person is dead, Elizabeth. A thinking, feeling person. We’re occult detectives. We’re not detective-detectives.”

  “If the killer had a working understanding of magic, this remains in our purview,” said Elizabeth coolly.

  “And if they didn’t? Plenty of people know the Hand of Merlin symbol. Seemed like the media had nothing else to talk about, three months ago.”

  “Is it widely known that salt can kill shoggoths?”

  Richard winced at the sound of the word. “Anyone could figure it out. All it takes is one accident. And we publish a list of food items to remove from donated garbage, so it wouldn’t take an expert to figure out the common denominator.”

  “Then what about the creatures in the mine, the ones Hesketh and Casin were sent to deal with? It’s too much of a coincidence that the killer chose that mine in particular. I think we were being led there. The sign indicates as much. They wanted us to see their work.”

  “Still doesn’t mean they had to know their magic.”

  “Either they knew the monsters were living there, and knew how to avoid or defend against them,” said Elizabeth, with the air of one casually moving a piece into checkmate. “Or they knew how to trap and bind the creatures. Either suggests a practitioner of some level.”

  “Flimsy.”

  “But sufficient to keep this our case, until we can get t
o the bottom of it. Unless you’d like the press to descend upon your father again?”

  The rapid pit-pat of soft shoes on modern carpeting added an ellipsis to Richard’s irritated sigh, and Alison Arkin appeared at the office door, hand already poised to knock before she was in range. “Um,” she said. “Anderson’s here.”

  Elizabeth and Richard exchanged a concerned look. “How loud is he being?” asked Elizabeth. “On a scale of one to ten.”

  “Er . . . we’re probably up to a nine,” said Alison. “He’s got a serious stomp going on.”

  “He doesn’t know, does he?” whispered Danvers.

  “I don’t see how he could, unless he has this office bugged,” replied Elizabeth. A moment’s thought later, she secretly ran her hand along the underside of her desk. “You don’t have to leave,” she added, as Danvers rose from his seat.

  “He’s going to order me out anyway. He always does. I think it’s a power thing.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  They felt the stomping before they heard it; it was shaking the entire floor. Each of Anderson’s footfalls was answered by a rattle of keyboards and loose items of stationery. As Elizabeth’s walking stick, leaning on the side of the desk, began to stutteringly slide to the ground, Anderson appeared. His face was the color of a stop sign, and his neck was on maximum bulge.

  “Danvers, out,” were the first words out of his mouth as he made a beeline for the guest chair. “Coffee girl, get coffee.”

  As Danvers and Alison left, with rolling eyes and nonplussed expression respectively, a woman Elizabeth didn’t recognize entered and closed the door behind them. She was Anderson’s age, dressed in a jet-black pantsuit and a loose ponytail the exact same color. She opted not to take a seat, but leaned demurely against the wall with hands behind back.

  Anderson stared at the door until Danvers’s and Alison’s footsteps were no longer audible, then slowly turned to Elizabeth, his neck rotating like the steel door of an interrogation cell. “Did I not tell you, when we began this little adventure together, that we did not want any nasty surprises down the line?”

  “Not in those exact words,” said Elizabeth, keeping up her bored, unintimidated face.

  “We found the school, you psycho,” said Anderson humorlessly. “That little Soviet gulag you’ve got running in Devonshire.”

  “I told you, we offer magically infused young people protection and education.”

  “You didn’t tell me you kept them in a torture dungeon! Man alive, what is wrong with you people? Rhetorical question. Don’t answer that. We’ll be here all day.”

  “You have to understand that it presents a very problematic image,” said the dark-haired woman. “It represents an institutional oppression of what many consider to be an underprivileged minority.”

  Elizabeth blinked as if this was the first time she had noticed the other woman. “And you are?”

  “Dr. Nita Pavani,” said Anderson, just as Pavani herself opened her mouth to answer. “Special diversity adviser. And you and her are going to be seeing a lot of each other while she gets this department up to standard.”

  “You have to understand,” said Elizabeth, addressing Pavani directly, “that educating the magically infused requires a specific methodology. The practices of the secondary school have been honed to perfection over the course of the last century.”

  “Yeah, ’cos that always works,” interjected Anderson. “We saw how finely honed your cocking Hand of Merlin were.”

  “This is a more modern age,” said Pavani. Her voice was smooth and understanding, and always had a hint of apology about it. “Helping the underprivileged—”

  “Underprivileged is not the word I would use,” said Elizabeth, “to describe individuals with the capacity to exert their will upon the fabric of reality. Discipline is required if their abilities are to be managed and suppressed.”

  “Suppressed?” repeated Pavani, eyebrows rising. “You force them to conceal their cultural identities?”

  Elizabeth wasn’t sure how she had been lured into this battle to the death, but she was damned if she was going to get pushed onto the defensive now. She locked gazes with the younger woman. “Just as one would suppress any ‘cultural identity’ that could potentially result in the deaths of countless innocents, yes.”

  Pavani’s eyebrows, having only just settled back down into neutral, jumped for the top of her scalp once again. “Many would consider that an offensive statement, Ms. Lawrence. Do you even allow them a say in how their lives are dictated?”

  “We have successful graduates of the program working in this very department.”

  Anderson scoffed. He was leaning back on his chair, enjoying the show. “Yeah. Casin and Hesketh. Real bleeding success stories, those two. The firebug and the neckbeard.”

  “I think a complete inspection and overhaul of this program will have to take place as soon as possible,” said Pavani to Anderson.

  “I think we’re in complete agreement, Doctor,” said Anderson, arms folded.

  Elizabeth clasped her hands on the desk in front of her, closed her eyes, and counted silently to ten, displaying such serenity that even Anderson was hesitant to interrupt. Finally, she spoke. “Do either of you know what happens to these individuals if they are not taught how to suppress their magical infusion?”

  “Can’t say we do,” said Anderson, smile frozen.

  “Then I’d like you to meet someone.”

  21

  Alison, with a tray of coffee cups in hand, performed a minor act of pelvic gymnastics to show the security guard the ID badge on her belt, then made her way across the lobby to the elevators.

  For her part, she liked working out of the new office. It wasn’t as scarily fascinating as the secret bunker, but at least she didn’t have to live onsite and had been assigned a small but homely apartment just a few tube stations away. There was no longer a chance of getting lost at night while looking for a bathroom and stumbling into a storage room full of quivering pseudo–life forms in specimen jars.

  But what Alison liked most was feeling that she belonged to something. She loved that she needed an ID card to be allowed into the building. In quiet moments, she would take it out and admire it, running her finger along the laminated words: Junior Agent, Department of Extradimensional Affairs. She wished the photo had been taken before her eager smile had glazed over, but she loved it anyway.

  Despite her having only been there for days, the rest of the old Ministry hands had wordlessly accepted her as part of the “old guard” during the move from the bunker to Victoria Street, and that had left her in high spirits. There had been a real sense of pulling together against the common foe with every grumbling trip to and from the removals vans.

  She stood waiting for the elevator to arrive, shifting her weight from leg to leg. What she liked most of all about working at the new office, she realized to herself, was not being in the field with Doctor Diablerie.

  “Hewwo, Awison,” said a voice at floor level. “Ow’s or day gowing?”

  Alison looked down to see Shgshthx, the fluidic who worked in the records department. They were technically housemates, as Shgshthx had been housed in the section of sewer directly beneath Alison’s new apartment building, and it was her job to bring the bags of garbage down for him every day.

  “Hi, Shgshthx, great as always,” she said, bouncing on her heels, the only cheerful body language she could manage with the tray of coffee cups occupying both hands. “Got to get these to Mr. Anderson. He just burst in looking mad about something.”

  “Ohhhh.” Shgshthx expelled a little poot of gas to fill a brief, thoughtful pause. “Wot does Mr. Anderson wook wike when ee isn’t mad about something?”

  “I’ll . . . let you know as soon as I find out. How’s your day going?”

  “Cud be better.” Part of Shgshthx emitted another puff of gas in a manner intended to resemble a sigh. “Shgshthx got moodered.”

  “He got what?”


  “Moodered. Someone wocked them in a mine and kiwwed them. All fwuidics felt eir pain.”

  Alison boggled. “Murdered? That’s horrible!” She glanced up. “Do you think that’s what Mr. Anderson was angry about?”

  “Ooh, I ope not,” burbled Shgshthx. “We don’t want evewyone oo make a fuss.” He rotated a little and extruded a couple of fresh sensing organs. “Do oo know at person?”

  Alison turned to look at where Shgshthx’s newest tentacle was pointing. There was someone standing on the far side of the security desk, waving with both hands to get Alison’s attention. The laptop bag dangling from her shoulder made an independent waving motion to enhance the effect.

  “Jessica . . . Weatherby?” breathed Alison, hands tightening around the drinks tray with a crunch of distressed cardboard. “Sorry, could you hold this for a moment?” She dreamily passed the tray over to Shgshthx, who was only just able to catch it with a panicky cluster of new limbs.

  “Hiii,” said Jessica as Alison wordlessly took her by the elbow and pulled her into a quiet corner of the lobby, an attempt at a welcoming smile frozen on her face. “I was so glad that I saw you here. I didn’t know who to talk to . . .”

  “What are you doing here?” asked Alison, as loudly as she dared.

  “Well . . . I didn’t have anywhere to go,” said Jessica, doing a sterling impression of a lost puppy. “And then I heard on the news that the old thing got shut down?”

  “Thing?”

  “Yeah, you know, the old government magic office and the school thing, so I thought maybe I could come here and they could tell me where to go.”

  “Jessica, the thing is, the school might not completely be shut down yet,” said Alison, her voice becoming strained as she picked her words carefully. “It’s not quite safe for you to be out in the open.”