The Delirium Brief

by Charles Stross

  “Lisa—I don’t know her family name?” Cassie ducks her head again. “I’m Cassie Daniels, ma’am. Is everything all right?”

  McGuigan’s expression is unreadable. “I don’t like surprises,” she says evenly. “You are not on my checklist. Wait here. Do not move.” She produces a drab-looking phone from her evening clutch and speed-dials a number. “McGuigan. Temporary manifest, I want you to verify a name, Cassie Daniels. Yes, please. Full workup.” Cassie shivers: McGuigan is the one with the bare shoulders but Cassie feels unaccountably naked before her gaze. There is mana here, and a powerful coiled intellect, something unnatural and alien that reminds her of something she’s seen before, and recently—“Oh, good. That will be all.” Ms. McGuigan ends the call and returns the phone to her bag. She frowns at Cassie. “Your collar is wrinkled. Fix it before you carry on,” she says offhand, then picks up her skirts and marches away to find other members of staff to terrorize.

  As Cassie watches her back recede she finally opens her inner eye, then closes it hastily and breathes a sigh of relief. “Yikes,” she subvocalizes, “that was much too close, YesYes!” McGuigan turns the corner of the balcony, taking her aura of unclean power with her. Cassie pats at her forehead, then runs a finger around the inside of her collar. “The brain-worms are here and they’re hungry.” Then she picks up her tray and continues around the balcony, looking out for conversations that might be worth planting an ear on.

  * * *

  Now not many people know this, but: Q-Division SOE has—or had—a Board of Directors.

  I, personally, am not acquainted with the directors. Most of us aren’t—they keep a low profile, even by the standards of Mahogany Row, where it’s not unusual for certain senior personnel to keep such a low profile that only the payroll computers in HR can remember their names. It’s not as if the organization doesn’t have a well-understood charter and protocols for day-to-day and month-to-month operations: it’s self-governing, most of the time.

  As I implied, I don’t deal with the board myself. But I know for a fact that Dr. Armstrong, as the seniormost Auditor, reports directly to the Board on occasion, as do the heads of other major departments: Human Resources, R&D, IT, Countermeasures, and Demonology, among others.

  But sometimes conditions arise that demand active governance, with new policy directives and regulations a priority. Under such circumstances, we rely on the Board of Directors to do their thing. And if one situation is guaranteed to call for executive action, it’s the sudden appearance of an order in council calling for the agency to be dissolved.

  Unfortunately there are certain emergent problems with the Laundry’s BOD.

  The Board gave up trying to appoint external directors a long time ago. For one thing, the security clearance process is protracted and most candidates are rejected for one reason or another. For another, experience teaches us that when they are first apprised of the purpose and structure of the organization, a majority of external candidates assume they’re the butt of an elaborate practical joke. And for a third, even when they find someone sufficiently open-minded enough to take it in but not so open-minded that they pick up every memetic infection that drifts past—well, it takes a long time to come up to speed.

  So what we end up with is effectively an emeritus board of very senior members of Mahogany Row, trained up in management or oversight roles once their utility as practitioners goes into decline due to impending K syndrome, who are now semiretired but still have enough experience and cognitive function remaining to be useful. They fill a variety of roles, acting as high-level emissaries to external agencies we liaise with, reviewing the big picture and our responses thereto, keeping us on track to deliver our mission objectives … and occasionally going to bat for us with Head Office, viz. the government of the day.

  This is why that evening (although I don’t know it at the time) a distinguished former professor of mathematics called Jack Berry—to which we can append: MA(Cantab), DPhil, PhD, FRS, OBE, KCMG, and prefix “Lord,” for he has indeed been appointed to the House of Lords—is sitting in the anteroom to the Prime Minister’s private office at Number Ten, waiting to be invited in for a laptop-side chat with that august presence. Lord Berry is one of those academics who has aged well, despite his white hair and male pattern baldness: his eyes still twinkle and he exudes a keen interest in his surroundings, despite a dismaying ataxia that could be taken for the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. He joined Q-Division in the late 1960s, an internal Civil Service transfer from GCHQ where he’d worked with James Ellis on what was then called nonsecret encryption. After a distinguished career he officially retired in 2008, but took a part-time appointment to the Board. It’s in that capacity that he’s now here to see the PM. “Not that it’ll make any difference,” Mr. Redmayne reassures him sympathetically, “I’m afraid his mind is made up. But at least you can say you made your case, eh?”

  Professor Berry’s expression is foreboding. “Of course. But I really must say, in my experience inflexibility and excessive speed on these matters makes for poor policy. One wouldn’t want to have to reverse oneself after a couple of years, what?”

  Redmayne nods, but his smile is on hold. “Of course. But my advice would be to pick your fights carefully. I’m afraid you won’t be knocking on an open door. And as for the Treasury report…”

  The inner door opens, and Andrew Jennings, the PM’s spad, high-steps out. He’s dressed for the squash court and waving his racket alarmingly close to the paintings adorning the walls of the outer office. “Oh hi, Ade. His Graciousness is ready for his next appointment right now; see you back here in an hour?” Jennings is bald, intense, and wears spectacles with such thick black rims that they appear shatterproof. He’s also in his late twenties and almost offensively bumptious. “Boss man says he doesn’t need me for witch-doctor duty,” he adds, with a dismissive nod in Berry’s direction. “You can go in now.”

  The professor glances at Redmayne, who smiles self-deprecatingly and settles back in the chair beside his desk. “I’ll be here when you’re done with,” he murmurs.

  Berry levers himself creakily out of his wingback chair. “Thank you for arranging this,” he says, then approaches the study door.

  The PM’s office is not particularly large, but impeccably furnished with impressive antiques from the national collection. Unlike the Oval Office in the White House, the PM’s den is not usually used for public appearances. Its window casements overlook the walled garden at the rear, but are protected on the outside with bulletproof glass; those parts of the walls unbroken by windows are fitted with tall bookcases, and the floor is broken up by a cluster of armchairs at one end of the room and a small meeting table at the other.

  The PM is sitting at one end of the meeting table, reviewing papers from an open ministerial red box. He’s wearing reading glasses and using a pen to scribble brief marginalia, his expression set in the intent mask of a schoolboy racing against the clock in an examination room. As the door swings shut behind Professor Berry, he walks slowly forward into the middle of the room, and waits.

  Jeremy Michaels, the Prime Minister, finishes with one Treasury-tagged memo, places it facedown in the other half of the open box, then picks up the next paper. “Well?” he says, offhandedly, as if talking to himself. “Make it fast.”

  Lord Berry knows a provocation when he sees one, and a hostile audience, not to mention a fix-up. Just the fact that he requested this meeting on Monday when the news broke and Number Ten only offered him a slot on Saturday speaks volumes. “All right. I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t already been briefed against my agency. I asked for this meeting to give you the other side of the story and explain why the course of action you’ve embarked on is incredibly unwise—if you’re listening.” Needling the PM is a risk, but he’s already so closed off that it’s not a huge one: if it jolts him into paying attention, it’s worthwhile. And indeed, Michaels pauses in his reading of the memo on his blotter. Then, with exaggera
ted deliberation, he puts down his pen and makes eye contact with the professor.

  “You have ten minutes, your Lordship, to explain why I should reinstate an organization that has demonstrably shat the bed in the most public manner imaginable, seriously embarrassing this administration, and the termination of which has already been announced. What makes you think there’s anything on earth that will change my mind?”

  Berry fixes his gaze on the wall behind the PM. “Well, two things, really. Firstly, Q-Division shat the bed, as you put it, because of a long-term shortfall in recruitment, funding, and coverage. Bluntly, they’re overstretched and we were unable to do our job properly. So my first message is that you can shoot your guard dog if it displeases you—but you’re still going to have to secure your backyard. The threat hasn’t gone away; if anything, we got off lightly this time. The order as issued made no provision for continuity or handover of existing projects; as such there are some, shall we say, very worrying gaps in coverage now. Firing the executive would have been one thing, but dismissing the line staff all the way down to the cleaners is going to cripple the replacement agency for months and lead to catastrophic loss of institutional knowledge. As to the second message, it’s a bit uglier. Obviously you need to be seen to be doing something, and a major reorganization is the obvious thing to show you’re a strong leader cleaning house. But we have a long habit of not using private sector contractors in this business. So there’s nobody local to take on the job. Other governments do things differently, and doubtless you’ve been wooed by certain security conglomerates who can boast of esoteric specialities. Our advice to you is that we already vetted these contracting agencies with a view to using them—and rejected them with extreme prejudice. They come with some extremely questionable baggage attached and they do not have this nation’s best interests at heart; it’d be like outsourcing the Army to Russia.”

  One minute. Berry pauses and takes stock of the PM. His heart sinks: it’s not looking good. Michaels’s head is slightly tilted, as if he’s trying to drain the water out of one ear—by all accounts he’s a good swimmer—and he’s wearing a slightly pained expression as if an annoying mosquito is buzzing around his head. Berry doesn’t dare to use his not-inconsiderable thaumic skills these days—not unless he’s willing to court an aneurism—but he is pretty certain that the PM is not wearing one of the wards SOE supplied to the Cabinet Office. But neither is his mind undefended. There’s only one conclusion Berry can reach, and it’s an unpalatable one.

  “Your Lordship,” the PM begins, then pauses. “You’ve just threatened me twice in one minute. Firstly, with unspecified nasty beasties from the vasty deeps: ‘last time was bad, next time will be worse.’ And secondly, you’re casting aspersions on our American friends’ preferred contractors. I have it on very good authority that the corporation we’re talking to is specifically rated as best-of-breed by our trans-Atlantic colleagues. As there is no domestic equivalent, I have to conclude that you’re trying to put the frighteners on me in order to stop the restructuring and reform of the failed agency dead in its tracks.”

  Michaels started slowly but is rapidly gathering momentum, and shifting gear from patronizing lecture to bully pulpit as he goes: “I will not be told what to do by a jumped-up maths teacher turned civil servant who bears partial responsibility for the worst disaster on British soil since the Battle of Hastings!” An expression of disgust steals over his face. “I’m fed up to here with you people spinning all sorts of bizarre lies to justify your featherbedding and special status within the Civil Service. As of now, that’s ancient history. SOE will not be reinstated. Instead it will be replaced, and its replacement will be integrated with the rest of the defense apparatus, with sails trimmed to fit our policy position, rather than made-up mumbo jumbo about alien gods and magic.” He snorts. “Get out of here. We’re done.”

  Berry stands slowly, then nods. “Of course. If that is your final word, sir, I have no alternative but to respect it.” The specialized ward he wears under his shirt collar is buzzing like a trapped wasp, desperate to escape. He can feel the pressure bearing down on it, the hostile intent of the Prime Minister’s master. He needs to leave and bear witness while he can. “I doubt we’ll meet again. Goodbye.”

  SEVEN

  AUDITION FOR APOCALYPSE

  Now pay attention:

  As you will perforce be aware if you’ve read this far, the Laundry has been aware for a couple of years that our oath of office is subject to various workarounds and contains loopholes.

  I gather that, historically, certain individuals in Mahogany Row were aware of these weaknesses but, for reasons now becoming evident, thought that the risk of third-party exploitation was outweighed by the benefits of being able to work around the outside of our normal constraints in event of an existential crisis.

  The oath is a geas—a thaumaturgically enforced compulsion—that maintains security by compelling the sworn party to work in the best interests of the agency, as defined by its charter established by Royal Prerogative, et cetera. Note that Royal Prerogative bit: the geas in question draws its power from the sum over time of the entire loyal British population’s faith in the Crown since that charter was established over four centuries ago. Which adds up to something like ninety million person-centuries-worth of belief. Hence the, shall we say drastic, consequences of violating one’s oath.

  Iris Carpenter got around it by convincing herself that with CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN imminent, the best way to maintain operational continuity was to adopt the methods of the other side. Call it the Edward VIII Approach if you like: if you’re convinced you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. (You might call it treason; I couldn’t possibly comment.)

  There are other weaknesses, of course. The definition of the Crown is not constant over time: does it mean the Crown-in-Parliament, the absolute Monarchical Privilege of Elizabeth I, the whatever-the-hell-it-was exercised by the Lord Protector during the Commonwealth, or what? The twenty-first-century Crown as defined by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act is not the same as the Crown as implied or assumed by the Treason Act (1800), which is not the same as the Treason Felony Act (1848), and so on. The oath works best on plain ordinary human brains. Those of us who are no longer entirely human are variably resistant to it. PHANGs are better than 50 percent likely to be immune to regular geasa, as we discovered the hard way thanks to Basil. I gather the V-parasite infestation confers resistance. Even the alfär invaders, who have a lot more experience at controlling PHANGs than we do, use other methods to ensure docility. And then there’s Angleton’s special case … which I have inherited.

  But 95 percent of the time the oath of office is pretty good at binding us to obedience, and by the time you read this file it will have been superseded by something much better, so that’s water under the bridge, right?

  Well, no. Because in addition to the lift-bridge itself having mechanical vulnerabilities, the foundations are deliberately weakened. Not enough to count in most circumstances, but with the right leverage …

  … like Dr. Armstrong’s plan …

  … the entire system can be destabilized.

  During normal operations (before it was dissolved so abruptly) the agency operated as part of the Civil Service—a secret part, but nonetheless, staffed civil servants. However, our charter was established by Royal Prerogative of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I in 1584. It was renewed by King James VI and I in 1611; and more or less swept under the rug by King Charles I during the disastrous period of Personal Rule that preceded the Short Parliament and the subsequent descent into civil war. For entirely understandable reasons, the small, collegiate body that saw to the nation’s magical defenses kept a low profile during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and subsequent Puritan rule. And by the time the modern British constitutional framework took shape in the early eighteenth century, nobody thought to check the dusty archives for fine print.

  So when Chris Womack’s researchers went digging a few months a
go, in order to prepare the groundwork for bringing the agency under the aegis of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, they discovered a loophole the size of the one that allows the heir to the throne to play with buckets of instant sunshine.6 Which came as something of a surprise, to say the least.

  Most people live under the misconception that the United Kingdom doesn’t have a written constitution. Ignorance is bliss, as they say. The UK does in fact have a constitution—but it’s written up in about thirty different Acts of Parliament, and Parliament reserves the right to tear it up and redraft it pretty much at will. In a republic, the source of state power is the people. In a monarchy, the source of state power is the Crown—an abstraction that represents the power vested in the person of the monarch. (Monarchy demonstrably travels faster than light, for the instant one monarch dies, the next in line to the throne inherits the power of the Crown; indeed, if we had a sufficiency of petty kingdoms to mess with we could use it as a basis for time travel, causality violation, and thereby an ironclad proof that P = NP. But I digress.) In the British system, ever since Charlie’s unfortunate haircut, the monarchy delegates its power to the Crown-in-Parliament, which is to say, the successors to the chappies who administered the severe shave: but that’s the post–civil war settlement.

  Our royal prerogative is a bit less abstract: it just says we owe allegiance to the monarch and his or her heirs and appointees. It completely misses out the indirection operator of referring to the Crown, so instead of a sophisticated royalty virtualization system we’ve been handed a raw, unprotected, bare-metal loyalty pointer leading straight back to the King or Queen.

  Oops.

  Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t make any difference to the day-to-day business of running the agency as an arm of government: it’s pretty much a legal abstraction. We do as we’re told and leave the policy-making to people at higher pay grades because we’re civil servants and we’re supposed to be politically agnostic, loyal to the government of the day.