The Apocalypse Codex

by Charles Stross

  So you end up with divergent sects reading from subtly different versions of the same book—which in turn is a third-generation translation of something which might have been the original codification of an oral tradition—and all convinced that their interpretation overrides such minor obstacles as observable reality.

  Which still wouldn’t be a problem except that some of the readers think the books are an instruction manual rather than a set of educational parables, a blueprint instead of a metaphor.

  Johnny whistles tunelessly between his teeth as he drives.

  He’s fed up to his back teeth with Godheads. Godheads in the person of his father and uncles and mother and aunts were why he joined up with the British Army when he was sixteen. Godheads following the blueprint for salvation got him into trouble a couple of years later—and then there was the Légion étrangère. Because when you’re born eldest son to the moderator of a remarkably exclusive brethren in an exceptionally free kirk where they don’t believe in sex because it might lead to dancing (which in turn would imply the existence of music), the tendency to see demons everywhere never really leaves you.

  It took meeting Persephone all those years ago to show Johnny that he was not, in fact, insane: the visions and nightmares in the corners of his vision were, in fact, really there, and that his ranting elders with their taste for spiritual warfare and their ancestral skeletons in a very watery closet were barking up the wrong tree.

  Johnny drives.

  There is a pricking in his fingertips and an itching in his left buttock that tells him where to point the pickup. Patrick didn’t exactly hand him a business card, but they’ve broken bread and shared a meal: the symbolism is not wasted. Johnny doesn’t have much in the way of natural magical aptitude, though like Persephone he has vastly more than most of the arid theory-driven paper-pushers of the Laundry. What he does have is a knack for seeing and sensing the unseen and unfelt. Centuries earlier he’d have been doomed to the madness of the witch-finder, but in these enlightened years he’s just a regular guy with a talent for spotting trouble before it spots him. And a couple of psychotic blades.

  But he has a bad feeling about Patrick.

  His itches and hunches take him off the freeway and onto a leisurely cruise around the back streets of Denver. They’re drawing him north, into a subdivision dominated by low houses behind rusting chain-link fences, untidy yards showing the detritus of suburbia—dirty plastic slides and paddling pools, aging cars. Patrick and (What was her name? Morag? Moira?) live cheaply and frugally, in one of these houses. Yes, this street, that house—with the black Suburban with blacked-out windows parked casually asprawl the sidewalk fronting it.

  Oh. Too late.

  Johnny pulls over and backs up until his tailgate is up against the radiator of the big SUV. Then he climbs out and walks up the garden path to the front porch and the door, drawing the pair of knives as he goes and holding them point-down. The door is ajar and there is an itching in his nose, and the skin on the nape of his neck wants to stand on end. A powerful geas surrounds the house, making eyes drift by and ears misinterpret noises. Johnny, however, is immune to such distractions. He kicks the door open and breathes in the stink of death.

  He counts two corpses and two bodies that still breathe. Heads turn to look at him, eyes glowing the green of luminous watch dials in the shadows. He raises his knives and they shrink backwards. Two bodies: one male, pretty much headless, a sawn-off shotgun lying to one side. Another…too late.

  “Awright,” he snarls, “so whose smart idea was this?”

  One of the breathing bodies—clad in a dark suit, with a spreading stain of sticky blood drenching the front of its white shirt around the handle of a carving knife—slobbers incoherently at him. The other is less far gone. In fact, by born-again zombie standards he’s positively eloquent: “The sinner summoned up a demon from hell, which shot his wife before turning his weapon on himself. You are Johnny McTavish. We have a message for you.”

  “You do, do you?” Johnny stares at the speaker. He looks human—as human as a missionary in his Sunday best—but his voice sounds sluggish and thick. “Stick yer tongue out, mate.”

  The missionary stares at him. Writhing shadows in the shape of worms twirl endlessly in the depths of the missionary’s eyes. Then it slowly opens its mouth, revealing a laminated silver carapace. Johnny stares at it. After a moment, it extends eye stalks and stares right back.

  “I should kill you right now. Like the others.”

  The missionary retracts what passes for its tongue. “Then you would not find it so easy to reach your destination.”

  The other missionary’s slobbering quiets. It’s nearly out of blood; even a cymothoan mind parasite can’t get much mileage out of a body that’s no longer capable of supporting aerobic respiration.

  “What destination?” Johnny keeps his knife aimed at the thing’s throat. He can feel the knife quivering, eager to carry out its task. He actually has to hold it back, to prevent it from flying out of his hand. It’s difficult to hold back, not least because of the black nucleus of rage burning at the back of his mind over what they have done here to Patrick, who was, if not an old friend, then at least a sometime brother in arms.

  The surviving missionary isn’t wasting energy animating its facial muscles: the hosts do not have much use for human body language. It is as unconcerned as a corpse. “We are instructed to bring you to the High Priest, if that is your wish.”

  Johnny can’t help himself: he laughs incredulously. “You what?”

  “Our master ordered us to serve his High Priest. The High Priest desires your presence at the service of dedication of the masses. You should come with us.” The dying missionary twitches slightly. “You must come with me.”

  “You have got to be kidding.” Well, it’s one way in, Johnny thinks. And with Patrick gone, he has no way of contacting the Black Chamber: that part of this errand is a failure. If Schiller wants to see him, that’s awfully convenient. “You aren’t going to convert me and you’re not going to plant one of those things on me. If you try, I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  “Come with me,” says the walking corpse. “Please, elder. Your brother commands it.”

  Johnny hesitates for a moment, but curiosity finally makes up his mind for him. “All right. But you’re driving,” he says.

  14.

  APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA

  IT’S 11 A.M. AND THE FIRST TRICKLE OF CHURCHGOERS ARE arriving at the New Life Church for today’s extravaganza organized by the Golden Promise Ministries. Pastor Bob Dawes is up front on the stage in the big sanctuary, fronting a team—there’s a light Christian rock band to get the audience energized, a couple of fire eaters with some fun parables to get across, and a bunch of other distractions to keep the audience focussed while the show builds up momentum.

  They’ll have help, of course: among the fresh meat will be sitting about five or six hundred of the Saved, those who have already entered fully into the doctrine of the holy ministry and who will live forever in His Glory when the light bringer returns. They’re primed to cheer and clap at the right points; nothing will be allowed to fall flat.

  It’s been a huge project to bring forward at very short notice. Schiller’s people have dropped everything, thrown themselves at the job to bring in food and refreshment stands, mobile catering kits, and a mountain of supplies. When you’re getting ten thousand warm bodies through the door you’ve got to keep them fed and irrigated. Luckily New Life expect thousands to show up for peak draws; they’ve got the sanitation and toilet arrangements to handle it, and the first aid support. They’ve had advertising airtime playing every hour for the past couple of days on all five of Colorado Springs’ Christian radio stations—begging, borrowing, and blackmailing to buy up airtime at short notice—and less frequently on the talk and music channels and the Christian stations with coverage in Denver; all this on top of the continuous roadside advertising campaign they’ve been running for the
past few months. The message is urgent: “Get off your couch and dance with Jesus!” Ray has personally authorized a million-dollar spend on this project at very short notice, and another million on the support infrastructure.

  They’ve even rearranged the main sanctuary for it, brought in additional seating, and laid down red carpet runners on all the aisles.

  It is the most expensive birthday party Alex Lockey has ever been invited to. Only he isn’t going to be taking time to enjoy the scene—as security chief he’s going to be spending the whole session in the control room. Ah well. The Lord will provide, he thinks ironically as he waits for Ray to finish with makeup.

  “Not too glossy, hon,” Ray tells Judy, his makeup girl. “I need gravitas. Most of these people don’t know me well yet.” His eyes turn to Alex. “The missionaries. Any word?”

  “Yes. They’ve found Elder McTavish. He’s en route.” He pauses. “There was some trouble with a spy working for the Operational Phenomenology Agency, but he’s been dealt with. McTavish led our men to him.” And a good thing too, he keeps to himself. There’s no room for loose cannon stringers in this operation. If head office were to get wind of what’s going on here before the Sleeper awakens it could cause any amount of trouble.

  “Excellent.” Schiller does not smile—not while Judy is working on his forehead with a brush: the artist is not to be disturbed—but his satisfaction is palpable. “McTavish will not yet be fully committed. Don’t let him see the others after you take them in.”

  “I certainly won’t, sir,” Alex assures him. “If you don’t mind…?”

  Leaving the presence of his master, Alex walks around the periphery of the sanctuary. The huge church is filling up slowly, and there’s chatter among the families as they queue for the best unreserved seats; ushers from GPM, uniformed in blue smocks, are directing them towards aisles where their arrival will cause minimal disruption. Some of them clutch burgers and burritos with their bibles, hot from the booths outside. The food is free, for as Ray puts it, a full stomach is a great way to get the undecided to sit down and listen to the good news.

  Alex’s two-way radio buzzes. It’s Deputy Stewart in the control room. “We need you up here now, boss,” he says. “We’ve got a situation developing.”

  “Check. On my way.” Alex ups his pace. It wouldn’t do to let any unwanted interlopers kick up a fuss on the Lord’s new birthday.

  Not long now, he thinks. His captive host agrees: Soon we will be reunited with the Lord. Alex basks in its warm glow of joyful anticipation. Strange to think that such a—his mind flinches from the next word—alien-looking thing could be such a source of love and consolation. But it is, and thanks to his wards his own mind is intact enough to appreciate the irony. And when you’ve worked for the Nazgûl for as long as Alex has, you learn to look beyond surface appearances.

  AT THE EXACT MOMENT THAT LOCKEY IS BEING PAGED BY SECURITY in the New Life Church’s control room, it’s coming up on 6 p.m. in London. In a dingy office block above a row of shuttered shops, somewhere south of the river, most of the windows are dark, for it is far into overtime territory in a time of spending cuts. But in one particular meeting room—windowless, in the interior of the warren of narrow puce-green corridors and beige-carpet-tiled offices that make up the New Annex—the lights are burning late.

  Approach the meeting room by way of the corridor and you will see that the door has no windows, and is identified only by a name plate reading M25. There’s a strip of lights above it, like a miniature horizontal traffic signal. Right now the red light is flashing.

  There’s a battered boardroom table in the middle of the room. Eight chairs—equally battered, castoffs from Human Resources—are scattered around it. Someone has furnished it with a large black velvet tablecloth, chain-stitched with intricate designs in conductive silver thread using a sewing machine that is stored in a secure vault room when not in use. A couple of ruggedized boxes full of electronics sit at one end of the table, attached to the cloth by alligator clips and to a wheeled, voltage-regulated battery pack by fat cables. The door is not merely shut, or locked, but barred: physically and by means of less obvious but more lethal wards. These are not the only precautions against unwanted eavesdropping—only the most obvious ones.

  “Tell me,” the Senior Auditor leans forward, “precisely how long ago Howard was supposed to report in.”

  Gerald Lockhart clears his throat as he checks his wristwatch: “I was expecting him to be here by now,” he says mildly. “I delivered the scram instruction at eight fifteen p.m. yesterday and authorized him to use any means necessary. He should have had sufficient time to make a connection by now.”

  The Auditor—sixty-ish, male, distinguished-looking, with gold-rimmed half-moon bifocals—exchanges a significant look with his colleague—female, late forties, with the twin-set-and-pearls look of a House of Lords apparatchik. She delivers the next question pointedly: “What is the communication situation at present?”

  Lockhart grimaces as if he’s just been asked to swallow a live toad. “In a word, poor. Phone calls are not connected. Email is not downloaded. SMS messages are not delivered. To determine whether this was specific to our people, I tried contacting various businesses in Colorado. Denver and Colorado Springs and all points between might as well have dropped off the map. The last information I could independently verify was that there is an anomalous snowstorm sweeping down the Rockies, that all flights in and out of those cities and their environs are grounded, and there’s some kind of problem with satellite phones.”

  The female auditor makes a note on her pad. “Have you enquired through formal channels yet?”

  “No.” Lockhart stares down his nose, refusing to be intimidated. “As I already noted at the last oversight meeting, local law enforcement is believed to be compromised.”

  “Have you contacted the Black Chamber, directly or indirectly?”

  Lockhart takes a deep breath. “That’s what we’re here to discuss. The answer is ‘no,’ by the way. Not without your authorization.”

  The male Auditor speaks again: “So we have established a baseline for this situation.” He looks at Lockhart sharply. “Denver. Tell me about its geography.”

  “Geography? It’s on a plateau.” Lockhart shrugs. “West of it, everything goes crinkle-cut. East, it slopes gently down to the Mississippi.”

  The fourth occupant of the meeting room finally speaks. “A plateau.” His tone is wintry.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” the female Auditor is snippy, “unless you have anything to contribute…?”

  “Yes, it’s a plateau,” Lockhart snaps waspishly. “With a couple of cities in the middle, and a big temple. The parallels to the layout of a certain other plateau in a location formerly subject to regular photorecon overflight did not pass me by, James.”

  Angleton nods. He rests his elbows on the arms of his chair, fingers steepled; beneath the harsh fluorescent light from the ceiling tubes, his face looks sunken, cadaverous. “I see.” He turns to stare at the auditors. “You are aware of APOCALYPSE CODEX?”

  The male Auditor nods. “That is the document that…” He glances at Lockhart.

  “Yes,” says Lockhart, surly at having his work exposed to hostile eyes and critical minds. “The one that was copied during the black bag job at Schiller’s hotel. And that Howard so casually emailed to an uncleared social contact—” His icy disapproval is profound.

  “The, ah, doctor of divinity,” Angleton notes with relish, “whose thesis was a study of variant Essene apocalypse cults.” He returns Lockhart’s glare with a blandly satisfied expression. “Do we have one of those on payroll? I seem to recall Donald Hiller retired nearly twenty years ago without any decision as to a successor being made. How long would it have taken us to locate and vet a suitable consultant if Howard hadn’t cut the Gordian knot?”

  “But he shouldn’t be—”

  “Mister Lockhart.” Angleton leans forward like an angry rattlesnake: “You picke
d Howard because he can think outside the box and improvise solutions in the field. And you sent him out into the field to support BASHFUL INCENDIARY and JOHNNY PRINCE, without showing him the PRINCE dossier or explaining the relationship between Hazard and McTavish and our organization. You are the one who decided that the best way to evaluate his performance under stress would be to handicap him in that respect. You chose your cake. And now you are complaining about the flavor?”

  “Dr. Angleton!” The female Auditor sits up. “If you please.” She glances at her colleague. “Should we action HR about this external contact?”

  “Hmm, I don’t think so. Not yet. A vicar.” The other Auditor picks up a pen and twirls it between his fingertips. “Too public a figure. Background checks only, for now. We can reel him in if he begins to ask uncomfortable questions.”

  “So.” The female Auditor raises a hand and starts ticking off finger joints: “Mahogany Row suggested BASHFUL INCENDIARY and JOHNNY PRINCE investigate a location that has unfortunate resonances with GOD GAME BLUE, not to mention PRINCE’s background. Howard was sent to monitor them and provide top cover while they were underground. He acknowledged a scram instruction but is now overdue, and there appears to be a communications blackout over most of populated Colorado. However, he transmitted documentary evidence that confirms GOD GAME VIOLET. The anomalous meteorological conditions suggest that GOD GAME YELLOW is in effect, either now or imminently. INCENDIARY and PRINCE are also unaccounted for. Is that a reasonable summary?”